


Ahsoka's Tale

by WingedLadyColette



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-09-03 15:41:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8719453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedLadyColette/pseuds/WingedLadyColette
Summary: The ruins of an old ship thousands of years old holds a strange device with a blue woman inside. The only true AI in the galaxy. While she doesn't remember her own past, she may be able to help uncover Ahsoka's, her master's and everyone around them. The Council has it's secrets, as does the Senate. And they will destroy each other. And everyone else.





	1. Blue

"Master?" Ahsoka calls out, slowly. She takes a small, tentative step back, her light blue eyes widening as the dark shadow settles over them.

"Not now, Snips," Anakin says, pulling at some of the loose wires protruding from the control panel in front of him. He yanks on one of the wires, letting out a surprised yelp when it sparked and gave him a little zap. He waves his hand around for a moment trying to shake away the tingling through his fingers. The pads of his fingers are singed a bit, but go along with the collection of scars that he already has marring his flesh.

Ahsoka puts her hands onto her lightsaber. "Master, what is that?"

Anakin pauses for a moment before tuning to look over at his young padawan, eyebrows pulled together tightly. His eyes turn toward the dark shadow that is easing over him and a slow back peddling padawan. The creature, making the shadow, growls down at them, raising it's massive claws up over it's head ready to arc down in a deadly blow.

"Rancor! Rancor!" Anakin gasps, quickly jumping out of the way of the Rancor's massive claws.

"That is a rancor!" Ahsoka yells, powering up her green lightsaber while Anakin powers his blue one. Anakin holds one hand out for her to back up before taking a few steps back himself.

"Yeah, Snips," Anakin says, offering a coy smile. "That would be a rancor."

"That stupid rodian," Ahsoka says. "There hasn't been a rancor sighting around these parts for over a hundred years, my foot!"

Anakin quirks an eyebrow a bit, in agreement, but doesn't respond. He jumps out of the way of another deadly swipe. Anakin is quick to slash at the beast's razor sharp nails, cleanly slicing through them. The beast rears back in rage, pulling it's claws back, now cleanly severed. Ahsoka takes this moment to charge in past Anakin and run her lightsaber across the goliath's stomach, putting it open.

The rancor roars in anger and agony, putting one of it's clawed hands over it's stomach for a moment before it collapses onto the floor, unmoving. Ahsoka takes a few slow steps back to make sure that the beast doesn't just lunge back to life and attack her before looking over at Anakin.

"I can't believe that's a rancor," Ahsoka finally says, blue eyes wide. "What's it doing in the ruins of this old ship?"

Anakin's lightsaber shrinks back into it's handle and he straps it back to his side. "Yeah, well, as big as it was, it wasn't a full sized rancor. It was obviously a baby."

Ahsoka's eyes nearly bug out of her head. "What? That thing is a baby? It's huge!"

Anakin quirks an eyebrow in agreement before walking back over to the panel, kneeling down to work on it again. "Yeah, well, they get bigger, trust me. Alright, Snips, make sure that there isn't anything else sneaking up on me while I try and open this door."

Ahsoka's lightsaber retreats back into it's handle and she crosses her arms over her chest. "Yeah, okay." She walks back over to his side, her blue eyes scanning the area more keenly, not wanting anything to sneak up on them again. Especially another rancor. And not if they get bigger. "Why is there a rancor in here, Master?" She looks over her shoulder to see Anankin tinkering with the control panel.

"Not sure. Rancors can leave in pretty much any and all environments and can be found anywhere their eggs hatch," he says as he shrugs his shoulders. The wire zaps him again. "Ouch!"

"I told you we should have brought R2-ie," Ahsoka says, giving him a sideway glance. "He'd be able to get us in there in a jiffy!" She snaps her fingers. She turns her blue eyes down the darkness of the hall for a moment, now being able to see a bit of the deep gorges in the metal of the ship from what she can only assume to be a hungry rancor baby looking for food long before they showed up.

Anakin rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well this ship is really old and doesn't have the access nobs that ships now a days do. He wouldn't be able to get us in there even if he wanted to. So, it looks like splicing is going to have to do." He goes back to work.

"Fine, fine," Ahsoka says, watching as there is another spark from the panel. "At least we know there is power inside."

Anakin pauses for a moment, staring at the panel before nodding slowly. "Yeah, you're right. That's odd. How can a ship so old still have power running through it?"

Ahsoka stares down at Anakin, blue eyes wide. "I.. I don't know. Some kind of backup generator that kicked on when we entered the wreckage?"

Anakin frowns a bit at that but doesn't reply. Ahsoka looks around the old ruins of the ship, that is barely able to be called a ship any longer. It's weathered and there are holes in the hull that have since degraded with time and elemental damage. The rust and foliage from the planet has taken over the rest. When they were asked to survey the ruins of this destroyed ship that was uncovered in the small farming community on a planet on the fringes of the Mid-Rim. It's a small world that's major export is wheat.

"How is this even here?" Ahsoka asks, looking around again. "Do you think it was in some sort of space battle over head a long time ago?"

"And crashed here?" Anakin guess. "Maybe, but I wouldn't know."

"Speculation is good, young one," a voice behind Ahsoka says.

Ahsoka yelps loudly, jumping into the air and turning around to see Obi-Wan standing right behind her, smiling playfully.

"Master Obi-Wan!" Ahsoka gasps, throwing her hand over her heart. "You scared the heck out of me!"

"Sorry, young one," Obi-Wan says playfully. He reaches out and pats her on the shoulder before walking over to Anakin right as the last spark goes off and the door finally opens.

At least, half way.

"Well, it's better than nothing," Anakin says, standing up, dusting off his knees.

Obi-Wan steps up next to him, opening his mouth about to say something, when his eyes flicker over to the corpse of the baby rancor. His eyebrows pull together tightly before looking over at Ahsoka, who smiles sheepishly, then to Anakin, who shrugged nonchalantly. Obi-Wan rubs his forehead for a moment, as if mentally debating with something before giving up and dropping his hand.

The two men walk to either side of the door and wrap their hands around the edges of the two sides and pull them part, to open up more room. Ahsoka easily slips past, turning on her lightsaber so that she can see in the darkness with the light green glow.

"Wait up, Snips!" Anakin calls after her.

"I'm just going to make sure that there is no more rancors in here to sneak up on you, Master," Ahsoka calls back, slowly moving through the wreckage of what could only be described as some kind of command center. She walks up to a large circular panel in the center of the destroyed room. She can hear the two masters behind her, trying to get the door to stay open, but it's screeching and moaning in complaint.

Ahsoka softly runs her left hand over the panel, assuming that it must be how the people of old either used to communicate with one another - seeing as they have something similar in their communications room - or that it's how they plan out battles or fly the ship somehow. For as old and aged as the wreckage is, the panel is metal, yet relatively smooth the slight blemish here and there, it is otherwise still in good shape. Ahsoka feels around a bit, fascinated by how everything else can be so weathered yet this panel is somehow in good shape. It's kind of interesting. Ahsoka isn't really someone who knows a lot about how things are made and what different types of metal things are, but she's almost certain that she's never felt this type of metallic material before.

She touches something and a soft humming noise fills the room. A few sparks go to different sections of the room as things try to boot up, but there is a lot of corrosive damage to the ship. There is a few holes in the ceiling that water has since chewed through, but even with the small beams of light the room is still dark. The lights overhead flicker slightly before blowing out, making Ahsoka yell out in surprise.

"Ahsoka?" Anakin calls, sliding into the room with Obi-Wan, the door snapping shut behind him in a spray of sparks.

"I'm fine, Master, I think I might have turned on something. I'm okay."

Anakin and Obi-Wan make their way over to her, looking around the dark, disheveled room. There is a smell of degraded metal, stagnant air and distilled water in the air. Obi-Wan crinkles his nose a bit and lets out a little cough before looking around the room with his dark blue eyes. He walks over to what appeared to have been a chair at one point but whatever material it was made from has degraded away until there is nothing but bare skeleton of metal prongs.

Running her hand along the smooth surface, she feels something protruding from it. It's a small flat panel. She wraps her fingers around it and pulls it out so that she can see it better. It's a little bit smaller than the palm of her hand, completely flat piece of metal with a strange circle of glass in the center. Ahsoka holds her lightsaber close to it to be able to see it better.

"Huh," she hums. "Hey, Master, look at this."

Anakin, from the other side of the large panel, turns to her. "What is it?"

"It was sticking out of this," she gestures to the circular panel in front of them. "Well, whatever this is. What do you think it is?"

She holds it out for Anakin to take. He looks at it curiously, stepping back into one of tiny rays of light to try and see it better. He moves it around his fingers for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and offering it to Ahsoka to take back. She does, looking down at it curiously for a moment before putting it into her pocket to keep and study later in better lighting.

 

They spent a couple of hours studying the ruins and even got a few clones in there to start setting up lamps and making sure it is secure for a Republic historian team that heard about the discovery and insisted on being able to see the ruins of the ancient ship that was somehow well preserved. When they got here, they instantly became excitable and started rattling on and on about things that went right over Ahsoka's head. She keeps away from them, her head hurting from all of their quick chatter and flurry of motion, running back and forth from their ship to the old unearthed one. She just hopes that it's as wonderful as they seem to think that it is. Obi-Wan took a moment to speak with them before Anakin finally turned to her and let her off the hook.

"Head on back, Snips, we're just going to go through the formalities and then meet you back up on the cruiser," he says, looking like he envied her being able to head back before her.

Ahsoka smiles, playfully, giving Anakin a little salute. "Thank you, Master!" She gives a little wave before heading to one of the transport ships to see it preparing to head back to the main ship to gather more supplies and hitches a ride.

Once back on the ship she heads to her room. She falls back onto her stiff military provided bed, sinking slightly into the otherwise stiff material. They have been doing mission after mission for the last two weeks and haven't been able to settle down and really relax until now. Missions hunting Dooku and tracking General Grievous and there was even a little stint with Ventress.

Ahsoka is exhausted. All of the muscles along her back burn with relief at finally being able to relax.

She lets out a long, slow breath, bringing one of her arms up over her eyes for a moment. She pulls her lightsaber off of her belt and gives it a little toss closer to her pillow before rolling onto her side. She pauses, feeling something poke into her side. She rolls back onto her back and digs into her pocket, pulling out the little piece of metal that she had stolen from the old ship back on the planet below. She holds it up to the light, looking in through the clear piece, seeing that it has a blushish tint to it. It wasn't just completely see trough and it's not actually glass.

Ahsoka lightly touches the space in the center in the circle. She feels her own fingers but there is a small, strange feeling in the tips of them, like a small electrical current or something. She wasn't sure what it was. She pulls her fingers back and looks at the metal instead. There is small grooves and indents but there isn't any sort of writing or anything to help indicate what it could have possibly been.

Ahsoka sits up, she turns the small device around but can't distinguish anything else. She walks over to her computer and looks around for a slot that it'll fit into and can't find anything. She then begins to look around her room for anything electronic she can stick it into and see if it is a data bank of some sort or something else of the like.

Then, a thought occurs to her and she grabs her lightsaber and runs from the room. She makes her way down the hall and into the communications room that is usually reserved for private meetings with the Jedi council or Chancellor Palpatine. And, yes, just as she thought, there was a flat insert that is the right size.

Ahsoka grabs out the panel and puts it into the slot, hopping that it fits. And it does. Ahsoka waits for a moment, then another, then another, until she starts tapping buttons, trying to see if the system will be able to read whatever the thing she picked up was. Maybe it was nothing, or it could simply be that they two systems aren't compatible and wouldn't work regardless.

The young Togruta's shoulders droop a bit and she lets out another sigh. "Well, should have seen that one coming."

"May I ask what we are seeing?" A soft woman's voice asks. Ahsoka blinks in surprise and jumps into the air, looking around toward the door into the room to see that it was still closed and there wasn't any there with her.

"Hello?" Ahsoka calls out slowly. "Is someone there?"

"Other than me? There is 359 lifeforms on this ship," the woman says again. "That includes you as well."

Ahsoka spins around to see a small blue human-looking woman standing on the communications projector. Well, she wasn't standing on it, more like hovering a few inches above it, living true to the projector image.

Everything about her was in shades of blue. Her hair, skin, eyes. Beneath the blue hue, there is what appears to be moving data patterns. Her blue hair is long, down past her shoulders and is dark blue, like all of the patches covering the more... respected parts of her body that didn't need to be shared with the rest of the world. Her body was definitely shaped like a regular human woman and leaves little to the imagination.

"Woah!" Ahsoka gasps, blue eyes wide. She steps closer, looking down at the small woman. "Who are you?"

The woman twitches, fizzling for a moment before reaching up and cradling her head for a moment as if something had actually hurt her. "I... I don't remember," she says, pulling her hands away. "It appears as though most, if not all, of my data has been corrupted."

Ahsoka's eyebrows pull together a bit. "Are you okay? Are you some kind of image from somewhere?"

The woman tilts her head to the side. "I don't understand. I am here in front of you."

Ahsoka blinks a few times, trying to understand. "Wait, are you saying that little device I brought in here was you?"

The woman nods. "Yes. That is me. I lost power for so long that I believe some of my data is corrupted because of the immense time lapse, but when you plugged me into your ship, I was able to do some extensive repairs, while gaining access to the holonet and learning galactic basic, seeing as it is what you were speaking just a moment ago. I apologize for not responding right away. My reaction time seems to have slowed because of damage."

Ahsoka shakes her head briskly. "No, don't worry about it, uh..." She frowns. "I have to call you something. Um, how about Blue? I know it's really lame, but it's also very fitting." She shrugs her shoulders. "Oh, my name is Ahsoka Tano, by the way." She smiles.

The woman smiles kindly. "I don't mind. I like it. I will refer to myself as Blue from now on."

"At least until you remember who you are," Ahsoka says quickly.

The woman's smile turns sad. "Once the data is corrupted to such an extent, it may be impossible to regain what was lost. I am not sure that I will be able to salvage any of my old data."

"You won't be able to remember any of your past?" Ahsoka asks sadly.

Blue shakes her head slowly. "I don't... remember as you do. I record everything, visual and audio recordings of everything that I can then later access in a simulation of remembrance when that isn't actually the case."

"You're a machine?" Ahsoka asks slowly. "With, like, a memory core?"

Blue considers for a moment. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose. But I am not like your droids or those of the Separatists. I am an artificial intelligence platform that is capable of assimilating data and making more accurate and intelligent assumptions and conversations based on my own data and varied interests."

Ahsoka blinks back at her for a moment, not sure what to say to that. Finally a, "oh, okay?" slips out.

Blue suddenly looks embarrassed. She brings her hand up to her face for a moment, looking around. "I..." she hesitates, before continuing, "I am a lot smarter than any of those singular droids."

"Ah," Ahsoka says, nodding her head slowly. "Oh! Wait here, Blue, I'm going to get my Master!"

Blue nods. "Very well, I will just be over looking the data I have collected until you return." With that she flickers away.

Ahsoka shakes her head. "That is so cool!" She turns and runs out of the room, looking around for a moment before closing her eyes and using the Force to locate her master, feeling out for him softly. Master.

She feels him brush her back and she turns and heads toward the bridge, trying not to run, but she can't deny that she's moving a lot faster then a walk. She smiles at the clones and other personnel that eye her as she passes. Her arms pump lowly at her sides as she makes her way through the maze of hallways all the way up to the bridge.

"Hey, Snips," Anakin says, turning to her as soon as she passes through the door.

"Master, do you have a moment? There is something that I want to show you," Ahsoka asks, barely able to contain her excitement.

Obi-Wan, who was standing between Anakin and Rex, raises an eyebrow. "Something interesting happen, Ahsoka?"

She nods. "You can come too, Master Obi-Wan. And you too, if you want, Rex." She beams happily before stepping back to the door. "Quick, come with! It's so cool!"

"What's this about, Ahsoka?" Anakin asks, rubbing the back of his neck. "We really should be going to rest. Who knows when we will be on the move again? We should take this time to relax a bit and -"

"Come on Master," Ahsoka says blithely, excitement coloring her eyes brightly. "You know you aren't going to be able to relax so soon after a mission! Now, come on! This is really cool and you are going to be so upset that you missed out on it!" She waves her hands around for them to follow after her.

"She might be right, Anakin," Obi-Wan says, amused. "It could be the discovery of a century."

"You don't even know the half of it, Master Obi-Wan," Ahsoka says proudly.

 

"And here we are!" Ahsoka says as the doors to the communications room hisses shut behind Rex. She makes a large sweeping gesture with her hand before walking over to the counsel in the center of the room. "Okay, Blue. It's Ahsoka! I'm back!"

There is a moment of silence where Anakin opens his mouth, about to ask his young padawan what she was up to, when a voice entered the room.

"Welcome back, Ahsoka." On the counsel in front of Ahsoka, a small blue woman, a little less than a foot in height, appears. "And you brought your master?"

Ahsoka nods, gesturing toward Anakin. "Yes, this is my master, Anakin Skywalker. Master, come say hello to Blue."

"What in the world..?" Rex says slowly, squinting dark brown eyes in skepticism at the blue woman.

"What is this?" Anakin asks, walking over to the woman. "Who are you?"

"Ahsoka Tano gave me a new designation, seeing as my last one is currently, if not permanently, lost to me. My new designation is Blue. It is a pleasure to meet you, Anakin Skywalker." The woman smiles up at him.

Anakin blinks a few times rapidly before looking over his shoulder at Obi-Wan, to see the older man rubbing his chin in thought, curiously, then he turns his light gray eyes to his padawan. "Where did she come from?" He asks, dumbly, not sure he understands.

"She was on the old ship," Ahsoka tells him. "That little metal piece that I showed you while we were down there, that was her. She is that piece, or is inside of it. When I brought it up here and plugged it in, she woke up."

"You plugged in some old piece of technology into the ship without first making sure it wasn't something dangerous?" Anakin asks, incredulously, glaring at her. Ahsoka stares up at him, first in annoyance, then in understanding, then a bit shameful.

"I... am sorry, Master, I didn't think about that..." Ahsoka's shoulders droop a bit, understanding what she did wrong.

"Please," Blue says, holding her hands up, "don't be mad at Ahsoka. I won't do anything to the ship, I promise."

"Why should we believe that?" Rex asks, mistrustfully.

"I was built by humans to serve humans," Blue says simply, adapting a far away look, as if recalling something. "My last order was to preserve..." she shutters out of existence for a moment, then looks as if she is in great physical pain. She brings her hands up to her head again, recoiling a bit, falling to a knee before she stands up again, looking tired. "I am sorry. That information is currently corrupted I wish I could say for certain, but I promise you, I am built for humans. But I am capable of choosing my masters. Ahsoka was the first face I saw upon awakening," Blue says softly, "I don't think it would be so wrong to serve her."

"I don't need you to serve me," Ahsoka says, shaking her head. "But I wouldn't mind being your friend. I bet it would be kind of cool."

Blue blinks in surprise before smiling softly. "You are too kind."

"What are you exactly?" Obi-Wan asks, stepping up next to Anakin.

"I am... basically a very smart program. A computer, maybe, that is highly intelligent and able to interact with other living beings such as yourselves on a somewhat equal level," Blue says.

"You... are a true AI?" Obi-Wan asks slowly. Anakin looks over at him curiously.

"Yes," Blue says.

"How did you know that, Master?" Anakin asks.

"I've read about them before in the Archives," Obi-Wan says, dropping his hand from his face. "It was something I thought about when we met General Grievous. I thought he might be one of them, but he is something else entirely. True AIs have only been hypothesized by great minds in the universe for as long as people has been making droids. They are the closest that anyone has ever been able to get to AIs. Are you saying that you are a real, true AI?"

Blue nods. "I am."

Obi-Wan looks over at Anakin and Ahsoka. "This is perhaps the greatest most discovery in I'm not sure how long. We need to inform the Council right away."


	2. Breach

"This is Blue," Ahsoka says, making a waving gesture toward the hologram of the blue woman that appears between them. She twitches for a moment before she appears in front of the council too, looking around at all of them, curiously.

"Hello," Blue says, the corner of her lips quirking up a bit. "As Ahsoka said, I am Blue. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi believed that it was prudent that they show me to you."

"Blue..." Obi-Wan says slowly, looking over at her, then to the council, "is a true AI."

"An AI?" Windu repeats, eyebrows pulling together.

"Not just any sort of droid, but an actual AI?" Plo Koon asks.

Obi-Wan looks over at Blue and nods. She looks over at the council. "I am. I am a hyper intelligent artificial program created by Doctor-" she cuts off, twitching, her voice getting deep and stuttering before continuing smoothly, "-lsey. My programing was originally to assist humanity in the fight against the Covenant. But..." she hesitates, a crease forming between her eyes. "But something changed. Something drastic. I know that my... goals have changed. But I am no longer able to identify how exactly."

There is a moment of silence. Rex looks around, looking like he wants to say something, but doesn't want to interrupt.

"What is the 'Covenant'?" Depa asks, wringing her hands together, as if suddenly apprehensious.

Blue turns her eyes toward her. "The Covenant is a group of alien races that are allied with one another that basically formed their own form of galactic community with religion, leaders, military status and an established hierarchy. Anything beyond that, I'm afraid has been corrupted." She shakes her head for a moment, visibly shamed by this. "I am sorry."

"It's okay, Blue," Ahsoka says, offering a little smile. "We can see that you are trying your hardest. It'll be okay. Just tell us what you can."

Blue smiles back at her. "You are too kind, Ahsoka. Thank you." She turns back over to the Masters. "I'm sorry that I couldn't offer you more than that."

"Is there anyone here that is part of these Covenant races?" Windu asks.

Blue looks around curiously for a moment before shaking her head. "No, I can't see them too clearly in my memory banks, but I know that none of you are of the same races as them. You are all different than what I have seen before."

"You appear to be acclimating fine," Plo Koon says.

Blue doesn't miss a beat. "When I was plugged into the ship, I gained access to the holonet and have since been learning all about the universe and all of the species within."

"Is that it?" Depa asks, raising a dainty dark eyebrow. "Or have you looked at other things?"

"I have looked through all sorts of things," Blue says easily. "Anything and everything on the holonet or connected to it, I can gain access to, if the connection is strong enough. The system you guys use is different than what I'm used to. You're able to share information much easier in this time than back when I was created and so now I am able to learn quickly and act accordingly." She smiles, pleased.

"So you will know everything on the holonet?" Ahsoka says, blue eyes wide. "That's amazing! Do you really need that?"

Blue shrugs her shoulders, turning to look at the young Togruta. "I suppose not," she says honestly. "Perhaps it's part of my programming, but I just enjoy knowing things. I want to be able to help and I feel that having as much knowledge as possible will assist me in this. I don't believe that I have to know everything, but being well diversified in all ways is beneficial."

"That's amazing! You'd be able to do anything knowing everything," Ahsoka says, her wide blue eyes blown as wide as they can go.

Blue's entire demeanor shifts slightly and her smile turns sad. "No, not everything. I wouldn't be able to feel emotion or be sentient. I'm still just a program."

Ahsoka's smile fades from her face as Anakin sends her a look. She doesn't seem to notice. She takes a slow step closer to the counsel and looks at the hologram of the beautiful woman. "Blue," she says softly, closing her eyes for a moment before opening them again, "I am so sorry. I wasn't thinking."

Rex's eyes lower to the ground, as if somehow her words rang a cord with him. His brown eyes slide closed for a moment, able to sympathize to a degree what the hologram woman was saying. He's not one to dwell on things like that too often, but he can't deny that his own existence is a bit - or perhaps more than a bit - controversial. The truth about what he his and who he is, does cross his mind. He doesn't think of himself as not alive, but he can understand the limitations that appear to be there when it comes to dealing in the subject of a normal living being.

Rex is alive, just like all of his brothers, but the concept and even speaking about it as if it was natural, is unnatural. Rex isn't there because two people loved each other so much. He wasn't born and raised like his two generals or the commander. He was made, grown in a test tube, taught to fight, and sent to war.

He's fortunate, though, because his treatment could be so much worse than what it is. He feels, dare he say, a true connection to his two generals in specific and even the commander. More noticeably between Anakin and Ahsoka. Ahsoka having this friendly, sisterly bond with, and Anakin is more like a true friend. When they aren't in a dangerous situation or have off time, more often than not if Anakin isn't busy, he will pull Rex aside and they will do things together. Talk about the latest mission, talk about the clones or the 501st in general, train or sometimes just go out drinking.

In some ways, Anakin was more of a friend than a general.

Maybe that's why Rex can sympathize with Blue's words because, at the end of the day, while Anakin, Ahsoka and really most of the Jedi, treat him and his many brothers like they are regular, living beings, they aren't. At any moment, one of the numerous codes engrained into them could activate or they could be given an order they can't refuse and the reality of who and what they are returns just like that.

Yes, Rex can sympathize.

Blue smiles a bit more brightly, pulling Rex from his thoughts. "It's-" she pauses, her smile fading away, as her eyes adapt a far away look.

"Blue?" Obi-Wan says, pulling the hand that was stroking his beard away, to stare down at the hologram with narrowed eyes. "Blue, is something wrong?"

She blinks once, twice, three times. She gasps and spins around, eyes looking around unseeingly. Anakin opens his mouth, about to ask her what was going on, when she speaks, her voice flat and haunting, "Security breached."

Ahsoka, Anakin, Rex and Obi-Wan stare at her blankly.

"What?" Anakin says, quirking an eyebrow.

"Did she just say-" Obi-Wan starts to say but Blue jerks into focus and turns away from the Councilors to the three Jedi and the one clone in the room.

"I am in the ships systems," Blue says quickly. "I have been monitoring everything coming in and out of the ship in the last hour and have noticed that there is a strange distress readings coming from some of the Clones..." she blinks a few times. "I thought that the men were alone doing..." she hesitates, turning her gaze toward Ahsoka to see her innocently staring back. "Never mind that. I was wrong. They just started flat lining. There is an assassin droid on board, I just caught sight of it in one of my internal scans of the ship. It's in sector four, down near the docking bay."

"There is an assassin droid on board?" Ahsoka asks, tensing up. Rex's back straightens up, ready to jump into action at the single most order from any of his commanding officers.

"Yes, there is three casualties as of this moment," Blue says.

"Damn," Anakin spins around and runs from the room, Ahsoka quickly following after, Obi-Wan looks about to follow before he stops and turns to Blue.

"You are in the system?" he asks, narrowing his eyes, dangerously. He looks over at Rex and nods his permission for the clone to go. He does. He has to save as many of his brothers as he can.

"Yes," Blue admits.

"Can you send out a message through the helmets of the Clones without the droid intercepting it?"

Blue nods. "I can. Would you like to record the message or for me to deliver it myself?" She straightens up.

"They won't know your voice," Obi-Wan says, shaking his head. "I will do it. What do I need to do?"

"Just speak," Blue says easily.

Obi-Wan steps close to her. "This is Obi-Wan Kenobi, all clones intercepting this, this is an emergency message. There is an assassin droid on board. I need all clones to slowly, cautiously and with the intent to stay alive and keep your brothers alive, move out of sector four. Travel together and keep your eyes open. We are going to need to get all noncombatant personnel out of the immediate danger as quickly and safely as possible. Anakin, Ahsoka and Captain Rex are enroute now. Let's move." He leans back.

"Message broadcasted," Blue says. "I am keeping a close monitor of the assassin droid. It's still in sector four." She tilts her head to the side slightly. "It's trying to gain access to the mainframe."

"Stop it," Obi-Wan says. Then, "Can you do that?"

"Yes," Blue says easily. "It's gained access and is searching for something..." she narrows her eyes a bit. "Huh..." She looks over at Obi-Wan. "With it inside the system, I can force and emergency shut down of it's processes. It may buy General Anakin the time he needs to reach it's location without any more people getting hurt or killed, and possibly be able to salvage it's core."

Obi-Wan stares at her for a moment before nodding. "Do it."

Blue nods. She places her hands on her hips and stares at a random spot in the room, eyes miles away as she moves through the system. Her lips quirk up into a smile as she nods. "I've shut down the droid," her smile fades, "but it's not going to be for very long. They have two minutes and seventeen seconds before all of it's systems have returned online."

Obi-Wan messes with the communicator on his wrist before speaking into it, "Anakin?"

"Master?" Anakin's voice comes in, breathless. "I'm a little busy."

"Anakin, Blue managed to shut down the assassin droid but you only have two minutes to reach it before it has full control of it's systems once more," Obi-Wan says.

"How did she..?" Anakin starts before stopping. "Never mind, I'll ask later. Thanks for that. Let's go, Snips."

Obi-Wan brings a hand up to his beard and strokes it slowly, looking thoughtfully at Blue. "How many personnel is still in the immediate danger zone?"

Blue stares off for a moment before blinking back into the presence. "Currently there is twelve. At the rate they are going, the area will be clear for General Anakin and Ahsoka to deal with the assassin droid in the two minutes time. If they aren't there right as it regains all of it's systems, it's going to be a little after at the rate they are moving. There is teams forming around the perimeter halls to keep it boxed in by Captain Rex, per General Anakin's orders."

"Good," Obi-Wan says, nodding slowly.

"Do you still have complete access to the ship, even now?" Kit Fisto asks, breaking the collective silence of the Council as they watched the scene play out. Obi-Wan glances over at the image behind Blue, having forgotten that they were there.

"I do," Blue says, turning toward the hologram of the Master.

"Is there any way for you to be able to tell us how the assassin droid even got on board?" Kit asks, interlacing his fingers together on his lap.

Blue nods, eyes sliding closed. There is about an entire minute of silence before Blue finally opens her eyes once more and looks between the Council and Obi-Wan to speak to them all. "The droid was brought in by the crating company; Yorba the hut's men the last time they provided the supplies from that sector."

Obi-Wan shakes his head slowly. "Anakin is going to just love to hear that."

"I can not say whether he was directly involved or not, but it was in the shipment his people provided, anything beyond when it came onto the ship isn't something I can say for sure," Blue says, shaking her head slowly. "I could speculate, but nothing more."

"No, it's alright," Obi-Wan says, shaking his head as well. "I think I've heard what I need to. We will have to look into this situation in depth."

Obi-Wan's communicator on his arm beeps. It's Anakin, and after a few moments of them talking he lets them all know that Ahsoka and Anakin dealt with the assassin droid and they were just surveying what has happened around them. They were going to be down there for a while to clean up the mess and check on the clones that were caught in the crossfire and hope there is something they could do for them. Blue didn't respond to that, but she already knew that it was a pointless endeavor.

"I have to say, today was quite the eye opener," Obi-Wan says, turning back toward the Council and the AI.

"I'm sorry about interrupting our conversation," Blue says, crossing her arms over her chest.

"No," Obi-Wan says slowly, "thank you for the warning. We appreciate it. You may have saved many lives today, and for that, we thank you."

Blue bows her head a bit. "Thank you for saying that. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to catch it when it first activated, there is still a few glitches in my system that I haven't worked out yet. I think I must have activated a failsafe in it's systems when I did my primary scan of the ship when I was first plugged in, so I must take responsibility for the deaths of those lost."

"Noble of you, that is," Yoda says for the first time since the meeting started, tapping one of his long nailed green fingers against his knee in thought. "An interesting predicament, we now find ourselves in. Much to consider about recent events, we have to do. Deliberate on this, Obi-Wan, we will."

Obi-Wan bows his head respectfully. "Yes, Masters. We will await your decision." Blue stares at Obi-Wan for a moment, studying him, before bowing as well. The image of the Council fizzles out of existence. Blue and Obi-Wan straighten up and look at one another.

 

"Tell me about yourself, Ahsoka," Blue says, pulling Ahsoka's attention from her holopad.

Ahsoka pauses reading to look up at the hologram above her on the communicator. She scoots away from it to get a good look at the blue woman who was sitting there an inch off of the shining circular panel. One of her legs is pulled up to her chest while the other lays flat on the invisible floor, both of her arms stretched out behind her as if to help hold her up.

Ahsoka shrugs her shoulder. "Sure, but I'm not very interesting. What would you like to know?"

"How did you join the Order?"

Ahsoka tilts her head a bit. "Well, Master Plo Koon found me when I was just three years old. I was in..." she hesitates, blue eyes lowering a bit, "I was in a dangerous situation that he saved me from."

Blue blinks innocently. "What happened, may I ask?"

"At that time, there was rumored to be a dark jedi, or a number of them, that were skowering the worlds looking for force sensitive children to help start bolstering their ranks. It was by a string of luck that Master Plo Koon found me before they could take me away for good," Ahsoka says, her blue eyes darkening as the memory plays in her mind, learning the truth. "But not after..."

"After what?" Blue asks, leaning forward a bit.

"My mother, dark jedi killed her," Ahsoka says as she closes her eyes sadly.

Blue doesn't respond right away. She just stares down at Ahsoka with wide blue eyes. She looks around the room for a moment, trying to find something to say that would somehow make the young girl feel better, but nothing came to her. Blue wasn't sure how to push the conversation forward. She just wanted a break from snooping through the holonet and the occasional scan of the ship to make sure that everything is as it should while trying not to be too intrusive. She knows her presence makes them a bit uncomfortable but they thankfully don't deem her a threat at the moment so she's not too worried right then, but she does know that she's being observed.

They are also heading back to Coruscant. The meeting with the Council was about two days ago and since then, everyone has been very quiet and looking at the security cameras wearily. Blue can understand their worries, it's logical. She's now integrated into the system and has shown she immense control over the ship itself while being plugged in. They probably haven't thought of just removing her from the communications councel just yet, or if they have, they are waiting until she makes the wrong move, or something.

But back to the present, Blue didn't mean for her innocent curiosity to hurt the young girl's feelings. Ahsoka has been nothing but kind to her since they first met and now Blue doesn't know how to be kind back.

"I'm sorry, Ahsoka," Blue finally settles on, flinching at how unapologetic it sounded in her voice. "I shouldn't have asked."

Ahsoka shakes her head slowly, forcing a thin smile. "It's okay. You couldn't have known if you didn't ask. Besides, I was just a baby, I don't remember her. I'm luckier than most. Most never know what happens to their parents. It doesn't make me feel any better knowing my mother's fate, but at least, unlike others, I know." She gives a little half-hearted shrug to give the impression that it doesn't bother her as much as it obviously does.

"Do you... enjoy being a Jedi?" Blue asks slowly, trying to shift the topic away without making it painfully obvious.

"I like it," Ahsoka says, scratching her left shoulder with her right hand. "I like being able to help people. I like my fellow Jedi. It's a good life to live." There is a glimmer of pride in her voice as a slow smile curves her lips upward. "I have a few great stories if you want to hear them?" Ahsoka says, her eyes lighting up.

Blue crosses her legs and turns completely to the girl and nods. "I would love to hear them."

 

Once they reach Coruscant, Ahsoka - after repeated reassurance from Blue that it wouldn't hurt her - removes the AI from the ship's controls and cradles her carefully in her hands as she heads to the docking bay to wait for Anakin and Obi-Wan to make it to the Twilight so that they can head down to the monstrous city below and to the Jedi Council so that they may be able to speak with Blue more in depth.

They came understandably prepared. When Blue is placed back into a counsel, it's in the Council chamber with Ahsoka, Anakin, Obi-wan and all the Masters in their semi-circle with her in the middle. She realizes immediately that the counsel is little more than a projector, not connected to anything that she could otherwise access. They are certainly cautious.

Honestly, Blue came to suspect that this could possibly be the turn that this was going to take, but Blue knows that she has nothing to hide - she doesn't remember anything and anything stored in her memory banks are mostly corrupted or impossible to decrypt - as far as she knows.

Yes, Blue found files in her memory that survived but are heavily encrypted but in such a way that only a series of events are thoughts will unlock them for her. Which is a failsafe that she has to begrudgingly say is perfect. If there is things in there she didn't want anyone to know, she's done it. Now the information is lost to even her.

Which may be for the best.

Knowing nothing may be what keeps her from... danger? Is that even the right way to put this?

She didn't know.

Ahsoka stands back, out of the way, with her head bowed as Blue is grilled once more about who she is, where she came from, what she knows. All that she had to say was all things that Ahsoka already knew. For some reason, regardless of how old Blue was, she was asleep for so long that most - if not all - of who and what her purpose was before this, is lost to her. She doesn't even know the events leading up to when the ship that she was in crashed. She was helpful enough to offer theories that sounded plausible enough but no one could really prove.

She believed that whatever she was doing, she was helping look after the ship that they found her in, when they were attacked by something and crash landed on the planet. She believes that in the crash, she was damaged and that's what put her into forced hibernations. There was panels installed on the ship that funneled energy gained from solar radiation into the ship for backup, that she believed is the only reason she was able to sustain herself for as long as she did.

It was flimsy, and a bit unbelievable, but she had another of her fits where she would try to access the information but appeared to be in pain, and flickered in and out of existence. It's kind of hard to watch. Ahsoka believes that Blue really was being truthful with them, and having been the one to be with her the most, she wished that they would let up a bit. She knows trusting blinding isn't smart, but she also believes in trusting one's gut.

And Ahsoka doesn't think that Blue is going to hurt them. Or wants to. She's just lost and confused, looking for something to anchor herself to.

Honestly, in the long stretches of silence when they were alone together, Ahsoka would watch her and see this sad lonely look cross her face. She didn't seem like any droid. She was like a real person. She was looking for something she couldn't remember, and longing for someone she couldn't believe she forgot. Sometimes, Ahsoka would hear her listing military ranks to herself, as if trying to recall something. It wasn't a memorization of the ranks, but like she was trying to remember someone who was one of the ranks, but couldn't remember which one. Then she would recite three digit numbers, but would get flustered whenever they didn't sound right.

Ahsoka wished she could somehow help, but just didn't know how. All she could do was sit back quietly and listen, then report it to Anakin later. She wanted to trust Blue, but she knew that she had to be careful. No one could get hurt because of her mistake. Her leniency and open nature. She had to be a bit cynical when it came to those she didn't know. It is growing increasingly hard to do that with Blue, but she's going to keep trying.

"I'm sorry, I simply cannot access that data," Blue says, for what feels like the hundredth time this evening. The setting sun has bathed the room a fiery red, orange, pink and yellow. The shadows of the Masters are cast against the far wall.

Blue looks tired and depleted, but has yet to complain, merely apologize for the gaps in the information and move on to the next question.

Master Windu, the head interrogator, opens his mouth, about to ask another question when all of the Masters, including Anakin and Obi-Wan all turn to look out the large windows. Ahsoka looks around confused for a moment before she feels something, faintly through the Force. It's like a cold chill, like something horrible has just happened. Ahsoka wraps her arms around herself, running her hand sup and down them to try and ease the goose flesh with the friction.

Blue notices the shift. "What's wrong?" She asks, looking around the room confused. No one answers her right away. She looks over at the young Torguta. "Ahsoka?"

The young girl shakes her head slowly. "I... I don't know..."

"That was a strong disturbance in the Force," Anakin says slowly, narrowing his eyes dangerously.

"What could it be, Master?" Ahsoka asks, looking up at the brown haired man.

Anakin shakes his head slowly. "I don't know yet, Snips. But I've got a very bad feeling about this."

 

Not long after, the Masters dismissed them, allowing Blue to stay in Ahsoka's care. Having nothing to plug Blue into in her room, she would have to go looking the next day, so Blue was placed on her nightstand as Ahsoka prepared for bed. Her first time sleeping in her own bed back in the Jedi Temple since what feels like forever was a relief, especially with the horrible chill settling into the Force.

Ahsoka's not surprised they cut the interrogation short.

Once Ahsoka has taken a long, much needed shower and changed into some bedtime clothes, she whispers a soft goodnight to Blue, whom she doubted could hear her, and rolled onto her side to sleep.

"A great tide," a voice whispers in the darkness.

"What?" Ahsoka calls, turning around in the endless void, seeing small, fragmented images too far away from her to be able to make out any sort of detail. She couldn't seem to move out of the place she was. She could spin around wildly to her heart's content but she couldn't move away from this spot.

"Hello?" Ahsoka calls out again. "Is someone out there? Hello?"

"A great tide is coming," a voice whispers into the shell of her ear.

Ahsoka spins around, but her eyes only locate darkness. There has got to be someone here with her, but she can't seem to find them.

"A great tide is coming," the voice says again, "and it will engulf the galaxy." A pause, then, "And devour everything."

There is a strange shift in the darkness, and suddenly Ahsoka is certain she's not alone, but instead of being afraid, there is something... almost calming about the presence looming over her. Something protective, even. Then she hears something, another voice, different from the first. Obviously a man's. It's aged and rough, but there is something in his voice that belies some kind of fondness over the single word he says.

"Cortana?"


	3. Planet

A cloaked figure stands on top of a massive cliff overlooking a drop thousands of feet. The planet's surface around them is like a desolate wasteland, looking as if it has been uninhabited for a long time. The lone figure doesn't move, just stares out over the expanse, massive half buried ruins barely peak out over the sand that tries so desperately to consume them. As the years pass their secrets become more and more lost to the world until one day time will consume them completely.

The figure doesn't seem to notice, or care, about the ruins behind them. No, it's something over the expanse of the seemingly lifeless world that has called out to the person. They are dressed in a very heavy cloak that covers their entire body - all muted colors of black, grays, browns - and a hood up over their head. There is one thing about all of the heavy, muted color robes that stands out in harsh, desert like conditions, a dull crimson red mask. They look from side to side, as if trying to see something more than what was right in front of them.

The figure's stance is strong, but their boots, dug deep into the loose sand, makes it hard to tell if they are man or woman. They tilt their head to the side, listening... deeper, deeper, beyond the howling wind and the scampering of small sand rodents by their feet. Something so far away, it seems, but they know that it is close. What they look for it on this planet, yet it has to be buries, deep beneath the surface, that's the only way they can understand how it's gone so long without being noticed.

They shift, slightly, tilting their head a bit more to listen closer. They can hear it, just barely, over the great distance, yet it's resonance is close by. They take a moment to breath in deeply a few times, letting their shoulders rise, then fall and all of the sand blowing around them comes to a stop. Every single tiny pebble stop mid air around them, as if all of time came to a complete stand still.

Then, in the deathly silence, the hollow voice quietly echoes through it. It's hard to make out at first, the voice so hauntingly quietly, like a whisper of death over the barren wasteland, but then again, it's making this planet's history a bit more believable. Nothing truly is just inherently evil, or dark. It has to be made that way, it seems.

The figure reaches up, slowly, and touches their hood, pulling it down a bit more. The voice is soft, hard to distinguish whether it's a male's voice or a female's voice, which isn't surprising. It is so construed with time and it's own echoes that it's really hard to make out what the voice is even saying. They didn't mind though, waiting that is, they were very patient and have spent the better part of their entire life simply waiting. They were never in too much of a hurry and because of their own nature, they didn't need to feel rushed at all. They had all the time they could ever need.

Their thoughts stop, soft, quiet musings, to listen to the voice that they could finally hear now that the world was a bit quieter.

"They let me pick...which Spartan I wanted..."

"Don't make a girl a promise..."

"...could you watch me die...?"

"...if you know you can't keep it..."

"You know me..."

"Regret. Regret. Regret."

"...like the others... fast... swift... brave..."

"Sleep well..?"

"So you did miss me..."

"...had something the others didn't..."

"With all due respect... enough dead heroes..."

"This is it: Halo Control Center..."

"...it knows I'm in the system..."

"The Gravemind..."

"A collection of lies; that's all I am! Stolen thoughts... memories..."

"I do know how to pick them..."

"Wake up... I need you..."

"I can see why you've chose him, Catherine..."

"I will always take care of you..."

"...something no one saw but me..."

"I'm not doing this for mankind..!"

"...can you guess..?"

"We were suppose to take care of each other..."

"...luck..."

"...and we did..."

"...was I wrong..?"

The figure raises their hands high above their head, blasting away all of the sand and debris creating a new sort of sand storm, but away from them. Blasting away more and more and more of the sand until something metallic shimmers underneath, something lost for many years. The figure lowers their arms slowly. They have found what they were looking for. And so much more.

 

Ahsoka woke with a massive headache the net morning. Thankfully with everything going on, Anakin was willing to let her take the day off, and she didn't have to go to classes because of it. She just curled up on her bed and tried to sleep the headache away. Because of a Jedi's power in the Force, it makes it hard for them to just get the random, common colds that normal people are unfortunately subjected to, but that doesn't make them immune to headaches, which is really unfortunate.

Ahsoka slept the day away, getting up only twice. Once to go to the bathroom, and once to shower and eat something else before going back to bed. Thankfully, by the next morning she was feeling better. The headache had subsided, but she felt a bit weak from having hardly ate anything the day before, so that was the first thing she did, hunt down some food in the cafeteria set up in the temple. She made sure to grab Blue on her way, wishing that there was some way that she could communicate with Blue without having to plug her in to every counsel she came across.

Obi-Wan and Anakin had been very careful in explaining to her that simply by connecting Blue to the communications systems on the ship, it gave her access to the entire thing. While she hasn't given them a reason not to trust her yet, they still had to take every kind action with a grain of salt. At least for the time being. So Ahsoka is going to have to be careful where she plugs Blue into.

"Nothing connected to the security system of the temple," Anakin had said as the three of them walked away from the Council room.

"And nothing connected to the Archives," Obi-Wan had said. "I'm not sure that our systems are ready to go up against a true AI. Until we have a better understanding of what we are going up against, she stays in closed circuit systems. Alright, Ahsoka?"

The only thing she could do was agree. It wasn't like she didn't totally agree. She knew how serious the situation was, and she knew how important it was to be so integrated into it. In the short time that she has known Blue, she can already feel the connection between them growing. She's not the only one, though. Her Masters, both Obi-Wan and Anakin, have made note of it as well and were optimistic that if she really was as she said, with no ill will or plans, she would be both a good friend, and ally to have.

For now, Ahsoka is just trying to think of something that she can do so that she can speak to Blue. She's a bit worried leaving Blue alone for so long, without her being able to communicate with anyone. Ahsoka's not sure what it's like to be in that little piece of metal, but she can only imagine that it must be a bit lonely. Not being able to speak with anyone. Just alone with her thoughts. Her fractured memories.

Ahsoka went to class after she got some food in her belly, barely listening to Master Goroo talk about old Jedi history. She knew most of what he was talking about, being a bit of a history nut herself, and so she felt it safe to focus on the little piece of metal in her hand, moving around her fingers. She looks at the small blue light in the center, wondering if in some way, if that was Blue. Was she inside of the light? Was she the light? Was she the piece of metal? Was she inside the piece of metal?

Ahsoka just didn't know, but she was honestly quite intrigued to find out. In many different aspects. A big part of her, though, was worried that somehow she was making a bad decision. She was worried that her curiosity may have invited in a force that they weren't prepared to deal with, which she didn't really understand, but she knew that she dreamt something very important the night before, she could feel it, but what it was is now somehow lost to her. It's making her head hurt. She's tried meditation but it's only making her head hurt more.

"What's that?" One of the padawan next to her whispers to her. She doesn't remove her eyes from the small metal piece. She closes her fingers around the small metal piece along with her eyes, letting out a long sigh before sticking it into her pocket and turning to the padawan next to her.

"Nothing. Just a souvenir from my last time out with my Master," she says quietly. She opens her eyes and looks over at the twi'lek next to her.

"Lucky," he says back.

Ahsoka shrugs her shoulder a bit, looking forward once more. "Yeah, lucky."

 

"What are you up to, Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka twists around in her chair to see Plo Koon a few feet behind her, hands folded patiently in front of him. He looks like he's been standing there for a while but she's been so engrossed in what she's working on that she didn't notice that there was a presence behind her. She flushes a bit in embarrassment, reaching up and rubbing the back of her neck.

"Hello, Master Plo," Ahsoka says, standing up from her seat. "I... didn't see you there."

"You were very engrossed in what you're working on, I've noticed," Plo Koon says. "May I ask what it is?"

Ahsoka takes a moment to look around to make sure no one else in the cafeteria was paying attention to them, thankfully not. Every once and a while, someone would look up at the council master curiously, but wouldn't stare for too long. "It's about Blue," Ahsoka says softly. "I understand the need to not only keep her hidden but to also make sure she doesn't just have access to the temple security system or the Archives without knowing anything else about her, but I feel bad just leaving her alone like she is in that little piece of metal."

Plo Koon hums deep in his throat, nodding slowly. "I understand. Go on."

"So I was thinking about the closed circuit thing in the council room and wondered if it's possible to make a smaller, portable version on my arm so that she can still remain hidden, not have immediate access to anything but also be able to communicate with me," Ahsoka says, rubbing the back of her head. "I don't know, maybe it's too much for someone like me, but I feel bad, you know?" She looks up at the tall Master. "Do you understand, Master Plo?"

Plo Koon reaches down and pats her shoulder. "I do understand, Ahsoka. Your kindness and selflessness never fails to make me proud."

Ahsoka blushes at his praise. "I wouldn't say that it's kindness or anything. I just..." she hesitates, shrugging her thin shoulders, "I just feel bad, you know? Everyone used to say that droids aren't able to feel anything because they aren't made of flesh and bones like the rest of us but... I think Blue is..." Ahsoka closes her eyes for a moment, seeing the blue woman sitting alone in silence reciting three digit numbers in no discerning order, stopping to run the heels of her palms into her eyes, looking worn and tired, "I think Blue is lonely."

"How do you suppose that?" Plo Koon asks, stepping around her to sit down by her side.

Ahsoka turns to him. "I think she's looking for someone, or at least trying to remember them, but she's having a very tough time with it. I really think that she's lonely and misses them. I understand the need to always be cautious and to not trust blindly but I was also taught to follow my instincts too." She raises large blue eyes to Plo Koon's face. "She didn't have to help us back on the ship, but she did. And she has no real reason to. We didn't really know what she could do, we wouldn't know otherwise. I want to believe that she's good, but I know that we have to be careful."

Plo Koon nods slowly. He reaches out and puts his hand on her thin shoulder. "You are very wise, Ahsoka. I happen to agree with you as well. She has helped us more than we have offered her. I think I know what you're trying to do. Do you mind a bit of help?"

Ahsoka smiles up at him. "I would appreciate it, Master Plo."

 

"Hi Blue," Ahsoka says, sitting in one of the little secluded rooms off of the library with Plo Koon the next day.

The blue woman smiles up at her. "Hello Ahsoka, Master Plo Koon." She looks around for a moment, curiously at the plain room. "Where are we?"

"We are in the padawan library at the Jedi temple," Ahsoka says. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see you these last few days. We've been trying to find somewhere to put you where we can still talk to you."

"Correction," Plo Koon says, "Ahsoka has been trying to find a way to keep into contact with you. I've merely been helping her out. She's trying hard to be able to accommodate everyone." He puts a friendly hand on Ahsoka's orange skinned shoulder.

Blue smiles up at Ahsoka from a little, crude wiring platform drive about the size of Ahsoka's palm in the middle of the table. "Thank you, Ahsoka, for being so thoughtful of me. I appreciate it. And you as well, Master Plo Koon." Blue crosses her arms over her chest.

"How are you, Blue?" Ahsoka asks. "What, um, have you been up to?" She gets this look on her face that made it clear that she realized how stupid that question was as soon as she asked it. Which was too late.

Blue shrugs her shoulders. "I'm fine. My options of things to do is limited if I'm not connected to anything," she says smoothly, not a hint of anger or sadness over such a thing, just simply informing them about what she was up to. "So I have been going over the data that I already collected from the holonet, analyzing, then distributing the information into the correct information folders so that I can access them later." There is a moment of hesitation before she adds, softly, more to herself than to them, "I just... don't want to forget again." It's there again. The loneliness, painted on her face and in her words.

"Blue..." Ahsoka says softly, looking over at Plo Koon, hoping that he was seeing what she was seeing. Giving some form of credit to her words from the day before. That Blue wasn't emotionless. She wasn't just some program. She was actually feeling something.

As quickly as the loneliness was there, it's gone. "It's alright," Blue says simply. "I'm just organizing the information. It's not as quick as you think. A little time is fine. There is no need to push yourself, but I do appreciate your help." She smiles, showing she means it.

Ahsoka smiles back a bit before hesitating, looking like she wants to ask something, but is warring with herself on exactly what it is. She looks like she wants to stop herself, but then seems like she loses the battle, for she asks, softly, "Are you looking for someone, Blue?" Plo Koon looks over at her but doesn't say anything, letting her make her own choice in this.

Blue looks up at Ahsoka surprised. "What do you mean, Ahsoka? I haven't left your side since I met you."

Ahsoka shakes her head. "No, not like that. I mean, are you trying to remember someone? You keep whispering numbers and military rankings. Are you trying to find someone? Or, remember them?"

Blue looks around for a moment, as is physically looking for an excuse to avoid talking about it. Then, she sighs. "Yes," she says, "I am looking for someone. I know there is someone I have to find. Someone I'm almost positive I was with before the crash but..."

"But what?" Ahsoka asks.

"He's human," Blue says. "I know that he was human. I also understand that I have been in sleep mode for a very long time, if not for hundreds of years. I know. I... understand that while it's a stretch that I am here, I'm not living. I'm different. There is no way that he would be able to survive time like I somehow have. Logically, I understand that. But I just... wanted to know if he's okay somehow. Or..." her eyes lower, "if his death was somehow quick..." She runs one of her hands up and down her arm in a very humanoid fashion, looking genuinely sad and pained by her own words.

"I haven't heard anything about dates..." Ahsoka says with a bit of hopefulness in her voice.

Blue's smile is sad. "You're kind, Ahsoka, but that ship, the technology, has to be hundreds, if not thousands of years old. It has to be a significant amount, because nothing is the same. The only thing that is familiar to me, is humans. Yet unlike my time, like in my fragmented memory banks, you didn't come from one planet, but from multiple. Humans have different homeworlds. Something like that doesn't just occur in a few decades. A significant amount of time has to have passed in order to make it possible."

Ahsoka doesn't respond, her pretty blue eyes flickering over to Plo Koon, her eyebrows pulled together tightly. She lets out a deep, slow sigh. "I am so sorry, Blue. I knew... I shouldn't have said anything."

Blue shakes her head. "No, it's fine. You wouldn't really know unless you asked. I am... not upset," she says slowly, as if the words were strange to her. Suddenly she looks like that isn't the truth. "I don't know why I said that..."

"Blue, have you been able to figure anything else out about yourself, yet? Anything in your memory? Uh, memory banks?" Ahsoka asks.

Blue places her hands on her hips and closes her eyes. "Images that I have been able to clear up. A bit of audio feed, but nothing too concrete. Words, nondescript ones. No names or places or times. Everything is too fragmented. I still need time to be able to clean everything up." If she could run her hand through her hair in exasperation, Ahsoka's willing to bet that she would.

"How long do you think that's going to take?" Plo Koon asks.

Blue sighs. "I don't know if all of it can every be salvaged again. I may have lost everything completely. I may have to purge all of the useless data. I don't want to..." she hesitates. "I'm going to give it more time. I don't want to run the risk of purging anything that I might still be able to use... or need. I suppose." She shakes her head again.

Ahsoka nods slowly. "That's good. In the mean time, I'm going to try and fix this thing up so that we will be able to talk all the time so that you aren't just all alone. I hope you don't mind."

Blue shakes her head. "I don't. Thank you, Ahsoka. You are a true friend."

Ahsoka smiles back a bit more. "Thanks."

 

"What does that mean?" Ahsoka asks, looking over at Anakin, then to Obi-Wan. They moved off to the side of one of the many intricate halls within the Jedi Temple on their way to being deployed again after their week of reprieve when Obi-Wan was giving the preliminary report from Blue's ship.

Obi-Wan rubs his beard a bit for a moment in careful consideration. "Based on what those historians reported, the ship can be predated back before the rise of the new republic a thousand years ago. They say that it is much, much older than that. It's design, the metal and that it is somehow been tampered with before. They believe this is the second time it's been unearthed, but that it was unearthed somewhere else and moved to the planet that we found it on."

"Recently?" Anakin asks, crossing his arms over his chest. His scarred eyebrow quirks upward.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. "They said, and this is all just speculation right now, nothing concrete, but apparently, they believe that it was unearthed originally a few hundred years ago and placed on that planet. There is sighs of wear and tare on the metal that speaks of a very different, much harsher environment than the planet that we found it on."

"So..." Ahsoka says slowly, eyebrows pulling together tightly, "what you're saying is that someone found this ship a few hundred years ago from whatever planet that it was on and moved it onto that little farm world on the fringes of the mid-rim?" She shakes her head as she crosses her arms over her chest. "Why would someone do that?"

"Perhaps where it was originally located was somewhere too out of place..." Anakin muses, reaching up with his right hand to cup his chin in thought.

"Hundreds of years later?" Ahsoka asks, tilting her head to the side.

"What's the point of that though?" Obi-Wan asks.

Anakin shakes his head slowly, letting out a little sigh. "I don't know yet. But I've got a bad feeling about this."

"May I cut in?"

Ahsoka looks down at the little communications device on her arm. It's not the prettiest thing in the world and it still needed some tuning up, which Anakin - a tinker at heart - offered to help out with at a later date. She holds her arm up, parallel to the ground and a small image of Blue appears, eyebrows also pulled together tightly.

"What do you think, Blue?" Obi-Wan asks slowly.

"As soon as you said that, General Anakin, about the ship originally being somewhere too out of place, I..." she hesitates, looking around for a moment as if unable to find the correct words for what she's trying to say. She sighs, looking resigned before saying, "I remembered something. An encrypted file that I have been trying to gain access to just unlocked at your worlds."

Anakin looks suspicious at that. "Uh huh? And why is that?"

Blue shakes her head. "I am not sure. I thought the encryption was based on things that I would say to unlock them, but I am seeing that is not the case. I don't believe it was specifically keyed into you, General, but merely your phrasing. That's what I'm trying to say."

Anakin looks a bit more relieved at that, but still a bit weary. "Okay," he says. "What did you remember?"

"I know the coordinates of the planet that I originally landed on, before we were moved," Blue says. "And looking at the galaxy map from the internet, I've located the only possible planet that it could be. A planet called Moraband, it was deemed unlivable by the Jedi council a thousand years ago and to this day is guarded by Jedi Seekers."

"A planet deemed unlivable by the Jedi, yet protected by the Jedi?" Ahsoka says, perplexed. "Why would they do that?"

Anakin and Obi-Wan turn their eyes toward each other, frowning. Finally, Obi-Wan turns to Ahsoka and Blue, saying, "I am not really sure."


	4. Delay

"What did the rest of the Masters have to say about Moraban?" Ahsoka asks once Obi-Wan and Anakin leave the communications room and enter the bridge of their control ship. Blue appears from the device on Ahsoka's arm, looking up at them inquisitively.

Anakin shakes his head. "You know the council," he says, voice flat. He ignores the look that Obi-Wan sends his way and keeps going, "They told us that they would handle it for now and if they needed anything they would let us know. For now, we are on standby." He rolls gray eyes.

Obi-Wan looks at him disapprovingly, before saying to Ahsoka and Blue, "As interesting as all of this is, I have to agree with the Council on this decision. While I'm sure that we would all like to go and investigate this matter further, the fact of the situation is clear; this war is not over. It isn't smart to just divide our attention on a wild goose chase just yet. We still have a war to fight in. The Separatists aren't just going to stop themselves." He crosses his arms over his chest.

Anakin shrugs his shoulders a bit at Ahsoka's half smile sent his way.

"That's what I meant," he says, grinning a bit when Obi-Wan rolls his eyes. Ahsoka smiles a little bit more, sending a sideway glance toward Blue. The small blue image of the woman turns to look up at Ahsoka too, offering a tiny smile of her own. It looks like she didn't really understand the joke but understood enough to know that it was a joke.

"Yes, well, we will keep our ears to the ground," Obi-Wan says, leaning on one hip. "For now, we need to just keep focusing on the war. We will wait until we have been given permission from the Council before we make any sort of thought in the direction of Moraban. Do you understand me, Anakin? I mean it." He narrows his eyes at the tall, curly dark blond haired man.

Anakin holds his hands up for Obi-Wan to see, classical 'I surrender' pose. Obi-Wan doesn't seem amused by the younger man.

"I appreciate all that you are doing to help me," Blue says, looking between the two humans and torunga. She tips her head a bit more in her thanks. "I would like to be able to return the favor, if I can. If, at any point, you need something, please don't hesitate to ask."

Obi-Wan strokes his beard for a moment. "Blue, can I ask you something?"

Blue nods, turning to face him completely. "Yes. What can I do to help you, General Kenobi?"

"What exactly did you do for the humans before we found you? I saw that you were able to access the ship's security systems, but was that the extent of what you did?"

Blue seemed genuinely interested in answering, her voice holding a touch of pride. "There was little I couldn't do. As you saw I was able to access the ship's security systems, but I was also able to take over every aspect of the ship. I could essentially control this ship, and remotely the rest of the fleet in your division if they were all synced up to this one's control systems, with the exception of the fighters who act independently of the rest of the fleet nine-out-of-ten times."

Ahsoka blinks a few times. "Uh, what?"

Blue smiles a little bit. "I am capable of controlling anything linked to the ship so long as I am connected. I can fully integrate into the systems. Anything within the abilities of the ship, I can do." She wasn't boasting. She was just saying. This was all just matter of fact to her. She was proud of what she could do, but she wasn't trying to make it out as more than what it was.

"Does that mean that you can control anything mechanical?" Anakin asks.

Blue hesitates for a moment, her smile fading. "Within reason," she says slowly. "It has to be something with sufficient running power. It has to have data, moving parts. An access point that I can be plugged into."

Two clones who entered into the room just a moment before completely pause. They look between the three commanding officers, the blue woman, then to one another before turning around and leaving the room. Ahsoka watches them go, confused, before looking between the two older men.

"Uh..? What was that?"

Obi-Wan waves his hand around dismissively while shaking his head. "Never mind that, Ahsoka. Blue," he looks down at the hologram of the woman, "would you mind demonstrating some of what you can do for us?"

Blue tilts her head a bit. Curiously, she asks, "Why? Do not get me wrong, I would love to help out, but I thought the rest of the Masters wanted to warrant caution when it came to me. Is this alright?"

It was a simple question, she wasn't against assisting but it was strange to be told one thing and then asked to do another that contradicts what was already asked of her. She didn't want to get anyone in trouble, which was why she was asking for clarification, but for some reason she doesn't understand, Obi-Wan smiles at her. His eyes flicker over to Anakin, who shrugs, his own curved half smile on his lips.

Thankfully, Ahsoka was just as lost as Blue was. "Uh," Ahsoka looks between Blue and the two Jedi masters, "what is with that look?"

"It's nothing, Snips," Anakin says with a shrug. "No need to worry about it."

"Thank you for your concern, Blue," Obi-Wan says, letting his hands drop to his sides, "but I have already spoken to Council about observing what you can do. They have approved. It's best to know everything that you can do and I believe in seeing it for myself. If you are willing to show it."

Satisfied with that, Blue nods. "Okay. Well, whatever you would like for me to do."

Obi-Wan smiles a little bit more. "Thank you for your cooperation. We appreciate anything you can do."

Ahsoka considers for a moment before pulling the device off of her arm and holding it out for Obi-Wan to take. He does, carefully, seeing as the device wasn't anything perfect or pretty, but it was Blue's new portable home, so he didn't want to break it in any way.

"Take good care of her, Master Obi-Wan," Ahsoka says, offering a little smile toward Blue.

Obi-Wan nods. "I will. Thank you, Ahsoka."

 

"Hi, Rex," Ahsoka says, walking up next to the white and blue armored clone.

Rex glances down at her before turning his attention back toward the screen in front of him, his hand on the clone at the sitting in front of the computer. "Hello, Commander. What can I do for you today?"

"Nothing," Ahsoka says, shrugging her shoulders. "I just wanted to see what everyone was up to."

Rex gives her a knowing glance. "Bored, Commander?"

Ahsoka stares at him, her face twisting into an indignant look, before she realizes that it is pointless and her shoulders slump a bit and a sheepish smile crosses her lips. "Yeah, okay, maybe. So, what are you up to?"

Rex smiles a little bit at that before looking back over at the screen, a series of numbers on it that Ahsoka doesn't understand. "Well, Commander," Rex says, "as you know, Blue has been integrated into the ship's systems per General Kenobi's orders, this time on the bridge rather than the communications center. So, since she's been up here, she's been making vast improvements all over the ship since she has access to it."

"Improvements?" Ahsoka says, blue eyes wide. "Like what?"

"For starters," the other clone says, looking at Ahsoka from over his shoulder, "if you look here, Commander, this is our communication boosters. She's upped the communications radius and overall clarity by five hundred percent. It's amazing. She's been cleaning junk data being picked up by our systems, filtering out the useless information and pushing through the useful bits. She has been cutting down the time I am needed doing such things. I am constantly going back through to double check and make sure that we aren't missing anything, but it is allowing me to be able to do more in my day."

Ahsoka didn't know a lot about this clone's particular job, but it did sound kind of impressive based on what she could ascertain from his words.

"Has she done anything else?" Ahsoka asks, looking over at Rex.

"Blue is by far the best multi-tasker I have ever met," Rex admits. He crosses his arms over his chest as he leans back. "She has been making improvements on the shields, admissions output, and has been hacking into the droids to update their capabilities. They are able to do more complex tasks then what they originally would have been able to. Nothing too drastic, but she has increased their reaction time and deduction skills."

"Huh," Ahsoka says, blinking rapidly. "Sounds like she's really helping everyone out." Ahsoka smiles. "This is great. Alright, thanks, Rex." She waves her hand a little as she turns to head towards the back of the bridge where she could see Anakin and Obi-Wan standing next to coordination station where they usually use to coordinate battle strategies, but it's where Blue has been since she entered the bridge.

"I have to admit, Blue," Anakin says, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest, "I'm impressed."

Blue smiles. "Well, I'm glad to hear it, General. It relaxes me to be in a ship's systems, doing upgrades and things of the like," Blue admits. "It was something that I used to do, so being able to do it again has brought me back."

"Happy to hear," Obi-Wan says, also leaning back and stroking his beard.

"Hi Blue," Ahsoka says, walking up between the two men. Blue smiles brightly at the young togruta.

"Ahsoka," she says, sounding genuinely happy to see her. "How have you been? General Anakin has been telling me that you were working hard on your training. How is that going?"

"Good," Ahsoka says, grinning over at Anakin, seeing his quirked eyebrow sent her way. "Pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. I happy to hear that my Master is so proud of me." Anakin rolls his eyes while Obi-Wan looks mildly amused. Anakin crosses his arms over his chest.

"Yes, Snips, I'm proud of you, but just remember," he leans down a bit to stare into her eyes, "vanity is both unbecoming of a lady, and frowned upon for a jedi." He smiles.

Blue lets out a little laugh as Obi-Wan rolls his eyes this time. He drops his hands to the side and looks over at Blue, saying, "And that, Blue, is a classical case of the pot calling the kettle black." He quirks an eyebrow at her and Blue giggles again, seeming very pleased.

"Working hard is fine," Blue says, looking over at Ahsoka, "just don't push yourself too hard, okay? You can't be expected to master all sorts of skills and be the best at everything over night. Work at your own pace. Hard, but safe. Just don't overdo it." The three jedi eye her curiously. Blue looks between them for a moment, trying to see what their expressions mean, but is unable to decipher them, so she gives in and asks, "What is it? Did I say something weird?"

"It's something I've been thinking about," Ahsoka says, leaning on one hip and crosses her arms over her chest. "The person that your looking for, I understand that they were probably a soldier of some sort, right?"

Blue's smile vanishes and she stares back with this somber look on her face. "Yes," she says after a moment of silence. "Why do you ask?"

"Military life back in your time, is it a lot like it is here?" Ahsoka asks, realizing as soon as the words left her mouth that what she said wasn't really what she wanted to ask. But the question was out there, she was interested in an answer for that to.

Blue must have also realized that her question was odd considering how the conversation was broached. She stares at Ahsoka for a moment before saying, evenly, "There is a lot of similarities, command structure and rankings are much the same, but there was never Jedi in our army."

"The Jedi didn't participate in wars in your time?" Ahsoka asks.

Blue stares at her. "There was no such thing as Jedi. I have never heard of them until you found me, Ahsoka. I have nothing in my archives that can even remotely be considered a Jedi."

All three of the Jedi stare at her. Then they look at each other, then back at her, then back to each other.

"Blue predates the Jedi Order?" Ahsoka asks, blue eyes wide.

"Not just our Order," Anakin says, placing his hands on his hips and looking over at Obi-Wan, who is nodding slowly at his words.

"Yes, she would have to be older than the Old Republic that existed over four thousand years ago," Obi-Wan says slowly, narrowing his eyes in thought. He brings up one of his hands to cup his chin. "This is all very fascinating. You are a lot older than I originally predicted," he admits.

Ahsoka gasps, glaring at the blond. "Master Obi-Wan!"

Obi-Wan blinks rapidly, looking down at the youngest in the room. "What is it? What did I say?"

"That is so rude!" Ahsoka says, shaking her head.

Anakin crosses his arms over his chest. "Yeah, Master, you can't just point out a lady's age like that. It's rude."

Obi-Wan looks surprised. "Oh! Oh, I am terribly sorry, Blue," he says, looking down at the hologram of the woman. Blue looks greatly amused.

"And here I thought you were suppose to be the sensitive one, General Obi-Wan." She lets out a little laugh. "Don't worry about it. I'm not insulted. In fact, I'm a bit surprised to be honest. The life expectancy of an AI is seven years, so being thousands of years old is a little much to swallow," she says, honestly. Her amused demeanor is gone.

Ahsoka's amused look vanishes for one of confusion too. "Why is it..?" She shakes her head. "I'm sorry."

Blue offers a wane smile. "It's alright. I'm not ready to go, but at least I got to save him. One last time. I even finally got to touch him. It was strange."

"What?" Anakin asks. "What does that mean?"

Blue blinks a few times, her smile fading into a look of confusion. "I... what? What did I say?" She brings her hands up to her face, closing her eyes and thinking about her words for a moment before pulling them away slowly, looking down at the ground, eyebrows pulled together tightly. She looks like she's trying to remember something and it's not coming to her easily. She closes her eyes tightly, lips moving but no sound is coming out.

Then it stops. Her hands lower, her eyes open and her lips stop moving. She looks up at Ahsoka. "The person I'm looking for. He was a very close friend of mine. I was with him for a good majority of my seven year lifespan. We got really close to one another. We were kind of the only one the other could trust when there was a lot of madness going on around us. We spent so much time together we had to watch each other's back."

It was kind of a strange transition, but Ahsoka figured there was a reason she was saying this. Maybe she remembered something and was giving a bit of back story so that Ahsoka and her two Masters would be able to understand. Thinking that, Ahsoka nods slowly to her words, but doesn't speak.

Blue doesn't need her to, she continues, "I got to help him, like I've always wanted to be useful to him because... I think... I think I loved him." She sounds ashamed of herself.

"What's wrong with that?" Ahsoka asks slowly. Logically, she could guess where the issue comes in. The woman technically isn't alive. It's not normal for her to feel anything, right? Or, at least, that's the vibes that Ahsoka is getting from Blue's actions. She doesn't see herself as anything more than an advanced program. Ahsoka isn't really the person to say otherwise, but she really believes that's not true.

"I can only speculate based by my actions," Blue says slowly. "But I... can't recall what that feeling was. Love. And even the feel of his armor. I can see it, but the information containing... 'feeling' isn't available. I can't even run any form of simulation on the matter because I just don't... know." She closes her eyes tightly. She looks pained by her own words.

"I'm sorry, Blue," Ahsoka says. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." She blanches at her own words. "I'm sorry," she says again.

"No," Blue says, voice flat. "Thank you for asking. By speaking, and hearing things, it helps me decrypt data files in my memory banks. Even if it's not much. I do appreciate it. So, thank you."

"Sir," the admiral says, breaking their conversation up. The three jedi and the AI all turn to look at him as he comes close.

"What is it, admiral?" Anakin asks.

"A request came in from the Republic, they want us to check out another strange unearthed ship that was reported about seven days ago by a colony planet in the next sector," the admiral says.

"Another?" Anakin says, eyebrows raised. He looks over at Blue, who shrugs her shoulders, not knowing anything.

"Not that I mind, or anything," Ahsoka says. "But why are they sending us? We aren't really the people for this job."

The admiral nods slowly. "True," he admits, "but apparently two days ago, the colony stopped responding. There hasn't been any sort of response of any kind from the colony in the last fifty hours."

Obi-Wan and Anakin looks over at one another and share a nod.

 

"This entire settlement is abandon..." Ahsoka points out as they walk through a series of small shanties, to see that everything really was deserted. The village was surrounded by large rice patty fields that went on for miles and on their way into the village they had to walk through them. Farming equipment was found laying half-hazardously around the fields as if dropped suddenly and left there without a second thought.

The village is set up with a cluster of two dozen little shanties all dotted around, surrounded on three sides by rice patty fields, which they cultivate as their main export, and then one grassy path - more weeds then anything - that leads them to the largest mountain on the planet. The ruins, supposedly, were discovered on top of the mountain, which was worn away somehow to plateau out at the very top. It's an outer-rim world that isn't high traffic and barely considered a Republic controlled world.

"Yeah..." Anakin says slowly, looking over his shoulder at Rex, who was a few feet behind him. "Leave some men here to investigate. We're going to take a look at whatever these people unearthed. There is nothing overly important in this area that I can tell."

"What's that, sir?" one of the clones asks, nodding toward a discarded net, against the face of one of the buildings that is pointed toward one of the far rice patty fields. It's oddly large, stained a strange neon green color with a repulsive stench coming off of it. Obi-Wan kneels down next to it, sniffing the air a little bit more, before pulling his face back, looking disgusted.

"I don't know," Obi-Wan says. "It's not exactly a smell that I am familiar with. Although, I think there is something about it..." He narrows his eyes a bit. "I just can't place it..."

"Do you think it's something that we need to worry about now?" Anakin asks, stepping up next to Obi-Wan, bringing a hand up to wave the air around and hopefully dissipate the distasteful smell. He glares at the net before looking down at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan stares at the net for a few minutes, thinking about how he wanted to go about this. There was a reason that it caught his attention, yet he wasn't sure what it was. Maybe animals of some sort that these nets were designed for, had attacked the village. He just wasn't sure he knew enough about this planet to be able to figure out what this net could be a prevention for. He knew that ignoring it isn't the smartest move, but he's not sure what is going on with it.

"Sir!" Another clone calls, drawing Ahsoka's attention away from the two older Jedi to look at the clone.

"What's going on?" Ahsoka asks, once she gets the nod from Anakin to go check it out.

"We have some survivors," the clone says near one of the shanties. There is a lot of debris tossed around the outside of the house as Ahsoka draws closer. There is some kind of piece of farm equipment that Ahsoka didn't know the name of, pierced through the stomach of a human man. It's obvious that he's dead with the puddle of blood on the dirt beneath him, but Ahsoka couldn't ignore that he was almost two entire feet off the ground, his feet dangling in the open space. The strength needed to lift a full grown human man and use what she would assume to be a dull gardening tool through a body is impressive.

"What could have done this?" Ahsoka asks aloud.

Rex steps up next to her, crossing his arms over his chest. "Something very strong, Commander." He looks down at her.

Ahsoka crosses her arms over her chest too, looking over at the clone that brought her over there. "I'm assuming that he isn't the person you wanted me to see?" She has to keep her eyes away from the body, seeing two clones in the corner of her eye trying to pull the gardening tool out of the man stuck to the outside wall of the shanty.

The clone that brought her over there shook his head. "No, ma'am," he points toward the house almost completely on top of the one in front of her. "There is a light moving around inside this house." He jabs his thumb in the direction of the house. Ahsoka shivers a bit at the sound of metal scraping against bone as they finally manage to remove the farming equipment from the mystery man stuck on the outside of the building and lower him slowly to the ground.

Ahsoka walks over to the door, pausing for a moment to press her ear up against the door and quieting her thoughts to listen. She can hear the soft sound of someone crying, a child probably. She pulls back and closes her eyes, holding her hand out toward the door and feel inside. She unlocks the door and manages to move whatever heavy furniture that was pressed against it back a bit so that she can open the door.

Ahsoka steps in and peers into the darkness. The house is tiny, barely even able to be considered a home. The kitchen and living room is the first thing that she walks into and everything is thrown asunder.

"Hello?' Ahsoka calls, squinting into the darkness, trying to find whomever the clone could have seen in the darkness. "My name is Ahsoka Tano. I'm a Jedi with the Republic." She looks around a bit more. "Hello?" Something shifts in the darkness and Ahsoka's eyes lock onto it. She squints her eyes a bit more and steps closer. She waves her hand around a bit, hoping to appear nonthreatening. "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I promise." She holds her hand out toward the darkness, hearing a child whimper. "It's okay."

A man, obviously human, steps out of the darkness, illuminated by the sunlight that's filtering in through the windows. He studies her appearance for a moment, looking terrified and weary, before he lets out a noise of joy and runs over to her. The man hugs her tightly before pulling back and speaking to her in a very strange language.

"It's okay, Rex," Ahsoka says, feeling the protective Captain at her back, his anxiousness flittering into the Force, even if he has no control over it. "He's harmless. I think." She shrugs at his little scoff.

"What's he saying?" Rex asks. "I don't understand any of what he's saying. It's no language that I recognize."

Ahsoka nods slowly, her eyebrows stitching together a bit. "I thought so at first too..." she listens to him speaking and gesturing quickly, for a few moments more before continuing, "but I think it's some kind of language that is composed of something I don't recognize, maybe tow separate languages, and what can only be described as a bastardized version of Twi'leki." She looks over her shoulder at Rex. "I think we will need Master Obi-Wan and Skyguy in here to help."

Rex nods and turns to some of the clones standing near to the door to tell them to get Obi-Wan and Anakin, when Ahsoka catches something in the man's nonsense. Something that sounds suspiciously like, "monsters" and something about a "mountain." Ahsoka's eyes narrow. From where she's standing, she can see the large mountain off in the distance, and feeling out with the Force, something is undoubtedly up there.


	5. The Monsters

Anakin and Ahsoka both stand a few feet away, watching as Obi-Wan - with undeniable patience - tries to not only decipher the fractured language, but calm the man and his family down. Yes, hiding in the darkness was a woman, another man, and four children. All of which were human. They seemed relieved that the Republic was there, but there was a very clear language barrier.

"I recognize a bit of Twi'leki," Ahsoka says, looking up at Anakin, "but not any of the other languages. I think there's... two more mixed in there?"

Anakin gives her a bit of a smile. "Good observation, Snips. There is a bit of Rodian and old huttese."

Ahsoka shakes her head. "What kind of language is this? There is almost no way to understand them." She looks up at Anakin with wide blue eyes. "Why would their language be like that?"

Anakin sighs. "This world used to be owned by the Huts many years ago. The people were enslaved before the Order came to be a thousand years ago and the New Republic rose to power once more and liberated the world. It happened with all of the worlds when slavery was abolished in the Republic. Now all of the Hut controlled worlds that still have slavery exist outside of Republic controlled space. Tatooine being one of these worlds," he says, sounding very scholarly.

Ahsoka's eyebrows pull together tightly. "So, because this was a Hut controlled world, the language is all backwards and mashed together so oddly?"

Anakin nods. "Yep, even on Tatooine the languages there are a bit hard to understand if you weren't raised there. There isn't a lot of traffic through here so I would guess that the people don't even have a native language really aside from the one that they've made up over the years."

Ahsoka shakes her head, sending a glance over at Obi-Wan and the people of this planet that he was communicating with. Obi-Wan is cupping his chin, listening to the man talk to him slowly. The native man must have realized that he couldn't understand them, so he's speaking slowly trying to get his words out clearly to bridge the language barrier separating them.

Obi-Wan nods a few minutes later before straightening up and saying "Safe" in all three languages before pointing to Commander Cody. The man nods and repeats the word in Rodian, looking relieved and muttering to his family.

"Cody," Obi-Wan says, turning completely to the yellow and white armored clone.

He straightens up. "Yes, General?"

"Get a drop ship down here and get theses people to safety and get a team down here to secure the area more thoroughly, we have to get a move on toward the mountain."

Cody nods and directs the family to follow him while speaking to someone on the communicator on his forearm. Anakin looks over at Obi-Wan, opening his mouth to say something but Obi-Wan shakes his head a little bit and nods toward the door for them to step out and talk about this in a little bit more of a private setting. Away from the worried eyes of the people of the home.

The three jedi, Rex and eventually Cody when he finishes doing everything that Obi-Wan had asked of him.

"What did he say, Master Obi-Wan?" Ahsoka asks, crossing her arms over her chest, looking at the oldest of the three Jedi. "I could pick up a few words, but out of context they don't make a lot of sense," she admits.

Obi-Wan brings his hand up to cup his chin, closing his eyes for a moment to collect his thoughts before saying, slowly, "I'll admit, the story itself is hard to understand because of the language barrier, but I believe I understand the gist of it."

Anakin rubs the back of his head. "I kind of wished I had the foresight to have brought C-3PO. He would have been able to figure this language out easily enough."

Ahsoka looks up at him curiously. "Oh, yeah. The human-cyborg relations droid. Where is he, anyway?"

Anakin looks around for a moment, as if the answer was floating around his head somewhere. "Um, he's with a friend."

Ahsoka raises an eyebrow. "Uh...huh... and who is this friend?"

Anakin looks down at Ahsoka, considering something, before saying, carefully, "Senator Amidala. She has C-3PO, which I built, and I have R2-D2, her astromech droid." He shrugs his shoulders, nonchalantly. Ahsoka looks over at Ob-Wan, her eyebrow still perked. Obi-Wan looks mildly amused, like he just thought of something that was funny to him.

Rex and Cody both look at one another, shrugging their shoulders at one another.

"I see..." Ahsoka says slowly as they elapse into an awkward silence.

Anakin shakes his head and looks over at Obi-Wan, "What did he say?"

Obi-Wan's amused look vanishes and he's back to business. "From what I understand, at about dawn two days ago something started attacking farmers in the rice patty fields. He wasn't able to describe the monsters because he was closer to the village and only heard the attack happening once everyone was running into the village to seek shelter. He ran home, boxed him and his family in, and haven't left since. Based on what he said, the village was being patrolled for the last few days up until a couple of hours ago, then they left."

Anakin frowns at him, crossing his arms over his chest. "They've been patrolling?" His grayish blue eyes narrows dangerous. "Why were they doing that? Where they looking for something? Could that be why they pulled out a few hours ago?"

"What could they be looking for, though?" Cody asks.

"Perhaps the same thing that we are looking for," Rex points out, shaking his head. "This sounds like it's going to become a real mess."

"If they are looking for these ruins," Ahsoka says slowly, "and without having seen them, that's all we can go off of, but if they are looking for these ruins, why did they attack the settlement? What could they have gained from that? What did these poor people do to them?"

"Who knows?" Anakin says, a deep frown on his lips. "But one way or another, they've left the settlement, for now. I think it's wise to leave some clones here to protect the village while we climb the mountain."

Obi-Wan nods. "I agree. Give me a moment. I'm going to speak with that man once more to see if he can tell me anything about the ship remains that was unearthed up on the plateau."

 

"A short cut, at least it's sound," Anakin says as he leads the long line of jedi and clones up the side of the mountain. The trek is by no means a small one, and they are all huffing along, but it looks like a straight path up, better than the twisty, curvy one that was obvious to them even from the village. This one was obscured, but projected to cut their travel time in half. Even if it's basically like climbing up a ninety degree angle.

"Remind me again why we can't be air dropped up there?" Ahsoka asks, grabbing hold of the rock face to her right to keep her from tumbling off the three feet of flat path for them to walk across.

"For one, we don't want to alert whomever is up there that we are tailing them," Anakin says bitterly, "and for two, there is something about this mountain that messes up with our airships. It messes with the equipment."

"I can attest to that," Rex says, looking at a device on his arm, "everything is going haywire. I think we might be able to scrounge together short-wave communications, but anything more than that might be asking too much of our equipment, General Skywalker."

Anakin squeezes the bridge of his nose, looking exhausted by this whole thing. "I suspected it would happen, but I was kind of hoping that I was going to be wrong." He rolls his shoulders back a bit, before he kept going.

"A little bit of hard work isn't going to hurt anyone," Obi-Wan says, trying to keep the mood light. There is some murmurs of agreement by the troops, but then they lapse into silence.

Ahsoka looks out down to the rice patty fields below. She can see the little village, the small collection of shanties, and see the remaining clones down there rounding people up to make the trek away from the mountain then off the planet until the Republic can start some kind of restoration project to try and help these people. But first Ahsoka, her two masters, and their clone entourage need to find out what happened and try to salvage the situation somehow.

Could this ship wreckage have something to do with this attack? It seems definitely likely. These people don't appear to have much, and haven't for a very long time, so it's a bit odd that they would be attacked out of nowhere without provocation. There is a reason that all of these events have been happening in these last few weeks. It's the Force, it's trying to tell them something. Ahsoka's just curious as to what it is.

She has to wonder what Blue is thinking right now. The AI is still up on their ship, keeping monitor over the world and helping make improvements, but this has to have some kind of connection to her, Ahsoka can just feel it. Too much is going on, Ahsoka can just feel that it's connected somehow. There is an anxiousness in the pit of Ahsoka's belly. There is something that she feels is going to happen, something she can't quite put her finger on.

Ahsoka pauses in her ascent to look up. They aren't far from the plateau, now. It should be another half hour to an hour before they reach it. Her calves are burning and there is a stitch in her side, but she ignores it. Her breathing is deep and even, trying not to make the pain any worse than it already is. It's not something that she hasn't felt before, but there is a feeling of trepidation in her gut that is somehow making it worse.

Something hot and heavy lands on her shoulder, pulling her from her thoughts. She looks over to see Rex staring down at her through his mask eye piece. His hand is settled on her shoulder and his head tilts to the side a bit.

"Are you alright, Commander?" Rex asks. "Do you need for us to stop and take a rest?"

Ahsoka shakes her head. "No, Rex. I'm fine. Thanks, though." She gives a little bit of a shoulder shrug, trying to act like it's nothing, mainly because she's not sure what to really think about it right now. She has no proof of anything, and until she sees the ship and those that attacked the villagers, she's not sure she'll be able to really decide one way or the other.

Ahsoka starts walking again, ignoring the pointed look both Anakin and Obi-Wan were sending her way. Rex pulls his hand back so that they can keep on walking.

Another thing that Ahsoka's been wondering about, is why did whatever these 'monsters' occupy the village for over a day without just killing everyone inside. Honestly, Ahsoka didn't have much of a problem breaking into their house and that was without trying to be forceful about it. She can only imagine how easy it would have been to find a way in had she had the intention of hurting people. Yet that family was okay. They managed to survive. Er, stay hidden, she supposes.

Why did they just hang around the village and not kill everyone? It just didn't make sense. The way Ahsoka sees it, she's happy that as many people as possible are alive, but she can't help the single word burning in her chest: Why?

She wished she could ask. She wanted to, but she's almost afraid of the answer. Afraid that it's going to be something that she doesn't want to hear. She's not sure what it is, just that she's worried.

Once they finally reach the top, Ahsoka's not sure what she expected, but what she saw wasn't it.

The plateau was huge, big enough that part of a very large ship, looking very much like the one that Blue was found in, is mostly settled on. A bit of it, it appears, is embedded into the mountain itself, but that could be from years of it being there. It's weathered, badly, worse than the other piece, but it much large than the piece they found Blue in. It's odd. While it's possible for them to be two separate ships, they look like their structures could have been similar. Ahsoka doesn't know much about old time warships, especially those that predate the Old Republic, but they look very similar.

The severed part of the ship, that somehow looks like a clean slice, but that could have been erosion, almost looks like it has a stairways leading into the ship. They take a moment to scout around the outside of the ship, looking for anyone they could, but there was no sign that anyone was up there. There was a bit of rubble next to the entrance that is tossed aside that looks like it was blocking it at one point but was discarded so that they could go inside.

Six clones tried to lift the piece of metal but could barely do it, attesting to the extreme strength of these aliens that Ahsoka saw in the village below. They've definitely been up here, yet there is no foot prints in the dirt. Odd. Perhaps whoever these aliens are they came and went before Ahsoka, her masters and the clones even got there. She just didn't know.

"Alright," Anakin says, turning to a few clones, "both of your squads to stay out here and keep an eye on the area, nothing gets in behind us." The two Clones snap their heels together and straighten up.

"Yes, sir!" They both turn around and start to organize their squads to obey Anakin's orders. The rest of them filter into the ship with Anakin and Obi-Wan in the lead, Ahsoka taking up the rear. Her green lightsaber is brought close to the walls so that she can see the destroyed screens of what used to be some kind of computer on the walls. It's worn away and badly rusted, but she can see that there is some kind of writing, but it's in a different language that she doesn't understand.

They walk slowly down the long hall, all of the clones have their helmet lights on and their guns poised, while all three jedi have their lightsabers humming in their hands as they walk around the darkness. There is a large door at the end of the hall, reminiscent to the one that Anakin had to splice into in order for them to find Blue. Anakin looks back, past all of the Clones and Obi-Wan to lock eyes with Ahsoka, showing that he was thinking the same thing.

"This is just like the ship we found Blue on," Ahsoka says as Anakin sends his lightsaber away, strapping it to his belt before kneeling down and working on the power box next to the door. The clones spread out a little bit, not having a lot of space to go, but trying to not all cluster together.

"Interesting," Obi-Wan says, holding his lightsaber close to the box so Anakin can see. "I wonder if they are from the same time. Or, if maybe they are even the same ship."

"How can that be though, sir?" Cody asks, standing next to Obi-Wan. "Why would one part of the ship be here and the other be on that other planet? Why are they so far apart from one another?"

Obi-Wan shakes his head, casting a look over his shoulder at the yellow and white suited clone. "I'm not sure, Cody, but I'm more curious than ever now, I'll admit." He looks over at Anakin. "I don't think that wire is live anymore, Anakin. There is no more power to this ship. At least not his part of it. If there is power running to it, it's not here."

Anakin sighs, standing up. "Yeah, I noticed. Come on, Rex, lets try and open this up the old fashioned way."

"With bombs, sir?" Rex says as he holsters one of his pistols and walks to the other side of the door.

Anakin grins at him, amused. "Maybe, but I'd be afraid this entire ship would turn to dust, it's so old."

"It's amazing that it's still holding together rather well," Cody admits. Ahsoka nods in agreement, walking through the clones to get to her master as Anakin and Rex try to pry the heavy metal doors open. With Ahsoka right there, Obi-Wan puts his lightsaber away and moves to help Anakin while Cody goes to help Rex. After a lot of grunting and groaning, the screeches open. Ahsoka cringes, leaning away from the sound with a pained look on her face. Even some of the clones were leaning away, unappreciative of the sound.

They manage to open it enough for Ahsoka to easily slip through, she does and keeps her lightsaber poised into the wide, dark room, giving her flashbacks to when they found Blue. It's so similar, it's like deja vu.

Anakin and Obi-Wan could probably slip through too, easily enough, but the clones wouldn't be able to get in easily. Anakin steps into the threshold and places his back against one side and his foot against the other and pushes with the help of Obi-Wan, Rex, Cody and the clone, Lucky, who took Anakin's place on Obi-Wan's side.

Ahsoka walks closer to the center of the room to see a small blinking blue light on the circular panel remotely similar to the one she originally found Blue in. She looks around for a moment, holding her lightsaber high above her head to be able to kind of see the shadows of the room around her. Like the room she found Blue in, this one is upturned as well with holes in the ceilings and the thick smell of distilled water, rust and mold. But unlike the room she found Blue in, there was three separate exits from the room going four different ways.

Ahsoka looks down at the floor next to her to see a big hole she almost stepped into, the metal groaning with her weigh. If she's causing this place to bend and bow, the clones in their heavy armor are going to have to be very careful.

"Watch out," Ahsoka says, "the metal is pretty chewed through."

"Yes, Commander," a few of the clones slipping into the room chime together. Anakin manages to push the two sides far enough apart that everyone can enter into the room. He bends himself backwards a bit to relieve some of the tension before he starts walking the room with the rest of them.

Ahsoka looks back down at the blinking blue light. It's half hidden beneath moss growing over the counsel. Ahsoka presses down on the button and something sputters around her. A fuse on the other side of the counsel sparks and fizzles a bit. The panel glows dimly and an image of Blue appears. It's heavily damaged. She shivers and flickers in and out of existence. She speaks and it's all distorted in a language that Ahsoka doesn't understand. It keeps cutting in and out and she seems to be staring vacantly, like she isn't speaking to them directly, but like it's some kind of prerecorded image that has been damaged over a long period of time.

"I wonder what she's saying," Ahsoka says, looking up at Obi-Wan who stepped up next to her. Obi-Wan nods a bit, looking curious as well.

"Yes," he says slowly, narrowing his light blue eyes. "It is nothing like a language that I have ever heard of." They listen for a full minute before she vanishes into the counsel, the flashing blue light goes off. Ahsoka and Obi-Wan share a look before they continue on exploring the room that they are in with Anakin and the rest of the Clones.

"Well," Anakin says, turning to everyone in the room after a solid ten minutes of them fumbling around the room looking through all the wreckage but not able to really find anything interesting, "I guess we are going to have to split up. Rex, you take your squad and Echo's squad and go with Ahsoka. Sixes and Bronze with me and Cody and Sky with Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan nods in agreement heading to the path down the center with Sky's and Cody's squads following after him. Anakin looks over at Ahsoka and puts his hand on her shoulder.

"Keep in contact. Good luck, Snips." He offers her a quirky smile.

Ahsoka smiles back, nodding a bit in return. "Yes, Master." She turns to Echo and Rex and their squads. "Alright, boys, let's get going."

They nod with a crisp, "Yes, sir!" before falling in line behind her. They manage to pry the door open, easier than it looked like Anakin and Obi-Wan had with the door that led into the room. They walk down a large hallway, looking into the rooms that splinter off, but either there doesn't appear to be anything important inside, or the floor is so chewed through that it would be dangerous to trek through so Ahsoka has opted out of it. There is some big holes on the hull of the ship that they probably could have come in through if they had realized they were there to save them the trouble of opening that rusty door, but it's too late now.

"Commander," Rex says, keeping close to her six, holding up his two blasters, "I have a bad feeling about this."

Ahsoka nods slowly, holding her lightsaber out in front of her. The hall is dark and creaky, and it doesn't smell any better heading deeper into the ship. It was musky and damp and she can hear the clones groaning a bit in complaint behind her every time the floor creaks or they slide a bit on the wet floors.

"Ah!"

Ahsoka spins around at a loud crashing sound and yell. One of the clone is contorted a bit with his left leg in the floor and his right one barely holding him up and his fingers pressed against the floor to keep him upright.

"Are you alright?" Ahsoka asks.

"Yes, Commander," he says as two of his brothers help pull him out. He lets out a deep sigh of relief. "Sorry about that."

"Careful, Rookie," Rex says, reaching out and patting him on the head before turning back toward Ahsoka.

Ahsoka waits until the clone has situated himself again before turns around and keeps going. The helmet lights of the clones help her light the way, but she's got a really bad feeling creeping up in her gut. Something doesn't feel right. It hit her with such for force, such depth that she had to stop at the middle of a branch off hall that went right.

Her chest starts to hurt as she feels something pawing at the back of her mind. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Her eyes scan the two ways, forward and to the right. Something is very wrong. She feels like... like she's being watched. Like there is something out there stalking them. The clones shift a little bit, waiting for her to make a decision on where to go, thinking that was her problem, rather than a feeling she was getting.

An entire minute of silence as the clones stare at Ahsoka, waiting for her to make a decision, but her mind is elsewhere. She can feel something through the Force. It's so small, so subtle, she's trying to think back to when they first got here if she had always felt it, she just didn't realize it. Maybe it's because she's so close, but there is something definitely here, she's just not sure where and how long it's been here.

Now that she's locked onto it, she can't easily ignore it. She looks dead ahead, feeling out with the Force, trying to locate this feeling. Something is down there, she can feel it so very faintly, but there is something else the other way, to the right. That she can feel loud and clear, now that she is looking down that way. Something is down there.

"Sir?" Rex calls out.

"Rex," Ahsoka says, turning to look over at the blue and white armored clone, "there is something-"

Something hard hits her on the shoulders. Ahsoka jumps, letting out a surprised yelp, reaching over and grabbing it immediately. The clones jump and position their blasters on her as she yanks whatever was on her shoulder off and holds it out for her and the clones to see. It's some kind of rodent-like animal with large, blunt teeth, long gray fur and four small beady eyes. It screeches at her, snapping little jaws at her.

Ahsoka glares at it, tossing it down the hall. "Get out of here, you!" It scampers off, finding a hole in the floor and crawls into it. She puts a hand on her chest, trying to slow down her rapidly beating heart. "That scared the hell out of me!" Ahsoka growls, trying to shake the fear from her hurt.

"Are you alright, Commander?" Rex asks, chuckling a little bit. "That was a shrill shriek you let out. It didn't bite you did it?"

Ahsoka rubs her shoulder, sending him a withering look. "I am fine, thanks. Come on, let's get going. This way. There is something down here."

Rex clears his throat and rolls his shoulders back. "Yes, Commander. Get ready boys!"

"Sir!"

They walk down the right hall into a large room that is shaped like a rectangle with two doors in the room. One on the right and one on the left, both are pried open all the way. Ahsoka blinks rapidly, seeing a shimmer in the light emanating from her lightsaber. The clones are splitting up around the room, looking through all of the overturned tables and devices, trying to make heads or tails of what this room used to be, as Ahsoka steps closer to the strange light distortion. She reaches out, expecting that her hand would slide right through it, like she was just seeing things, but she feels something metal under her fingers.

Ahsoka takes a tiny step and slips a little, her leg almost falling into a small hole next to her foot. She manages to catch herself before looking back up at the shimmering, confused. She steps closer, carefully, before reaching out and touching the shimmering again. She can feel smooth, cool metal under her fingertips before looking up, way above her head to see that it has to go up at least six and half to seven feet.

"What..?" Ahsoka's eyebrows pull together.

The shimmer moves and she feels something wrap around her neck and lift her up off the ground by her throat. Ahsoka chokes a bit before bringing up her lightsaber and brings it down toward the figure but something large wraps around her fist, easily. Ahsoka kicks her legs out, trying to push away from whatever it is holding her, but it's grip around her neck is iron clad. Her feet are planted against what she could only assume is it's chest, and she's trying to push away but it doesn't let her go and she's bending her spine weird trying to overpower it.

"Commander!" Rex yells from somewhere behind her. She hears five or six blaster shots and they hit the shimmering figure, making it light up and shimmer more until it completely disappears and something begins to appear in it's face. Off the glow of her lightsaber, the first thing that comes through is some kind of light colored helmet over it's face and a jaw filled with razor sharp teeth broken up into four sections.

She has never seen an alien like this before. It lets out a low snarl before the entire room starts moving. In the corner of her eye, Ahsoka can see all sorts of different shimmers start moving toward the clones.

"Fire!" Rex orders and the room lights up.


	6. Survivor

As a little girl, and maybe still as a young woman, Ahsoka has always loved Plo Koon. He was the one who saved her as a baby and brought her to the Order. Plo Koon took a particular interest in her and looked after her while she was a youngling and then when she began her schooling to become a padawan. He would always be there if she needed him. He would visit her every couple of days, if he could, just to check in on her and help her out in whatever she could need. No matter how easy or trivial it was to him, he always seemed happy to help and Ahsoka appreciated it.

When Yoda called her to him to tell her that she was going to be given a master, Ahsoka was so excited. She thought, for certain, that it was going to be Plo Koon who would be her master. But it wasn't. Ahsoka was a bit upset about that not being the case at first, but she was ready to make the best of it. She would try her hardest to make whoever her master was proud and then, by extension, make Master Plo proud. She knew it wouldn't be easy, but that was simply the life that she had chosen. She would work hard. She kind of liked working hard anyway. The sense of fulfillment made her appreciate it.

Ahsoka was happy with her master, though. She felt like her and Anakin were actually a really good match. Ahsoka was proud that Anakin was her master and would work hard with him and for him. She loved her master, looked up to him, even - and not because she was so much shorter than him. She would do whatever she could to make him proud, but it's in the moments of great stress and fear that Ahsoka finds herself traveling back in time in her memories to when she was a little girl, waiting in the hallway outside of the padawan cafeteria, looking one way and the other trying to see the master she had become so close with.

She loved Plo Koon. He looked after her, protected her, and there was always a part of her that was anxious when he wasn't around. In some ways, she looked at him like a fatherly figure. She knows that the Clones see it much the same. He is very much like a father to them, a buddy. He treated all of the clones as if they were his children and looked after them as such, so Ahsoka's not surprised that she felt this way about him since she herself was a child.

But it's in these moments of desperation that she wished he was there with her. That his veil of protection and fatherly aura would be there with her in that moment to help guide her. It was just a natural reaction for her. She did not want to be weak. She wanted to be strong and be able to rely on her own strength, but in moments like this, she did wish that the man who saved her life as a small child would come and save her again. Or somehow give her the strength to be able to save herself.

But knowing that sometimes, she just had to do it herself, Ahsoka tries to push the desire away. Some things she just has to do by herself. And she is always going to be her own last line of defense. She has to defend herself. Especially now that she isn't a youngling anymore, out in wartime. She has the clones and fellow Jedi to watch her back, but at the end of the day, she will always be her own last line of defense.

Ahsoka forces her eyes open, hearing the sound of battle as if it were miles away at the back of a deep cave, even though she knows that it is happening in the room around her. Her vision is tunneled with flashes of blue and green lights from somewhere on the left side of the room that calls her attention faintly, but not enough to hide the fact that she can feel the life draining out of her. Through the Force, she could feel both Anakin and Obi-Wan's minds reach out to hers - or had hers reached out toward theirs? - before her entire vision went black, a soft of calm settling over her as instead of pain, relief started to flood into her. Like it's been years since she last slept and now she was finally getting it.

But she had to move. She was going to die otherwise. Sleeping, especially now, was not an option. At least not a viable one.

Mustering up the last of her strength, she brought her leg up as hard and as fast as she could. It connects with something, harder than she dared to hope, and the pressure around her throat is released. Ahsoka lands on one foot, teeters over to the side and lands hard on her hip and shoulder. She is quickly gasping and wheezing for air, feeling like her mind is in a deep haze. There is this horrible pulsating in her throat and around her skull. She feels like she has no strength in her entire body but she manages to roll onto her stomach and tries to see through black spotted vision.

Ahsoka can barely see anything and it feels like she can't get enough air into her lungs, yet she threads her fingers through the grates on the floor and starts to pull herself away from the heavy thumping of the strange alien behind her. She doesn't know where she hit him, but judging by it's angry and furious roars, it was nowhere pleasant. And probably close to the face. Or did she imagine the pull on her shoe like a tooth caught in the fabric?

As Ahsoka pulls herself away from the roaring behind her and deeper into the cave of far away battle, she tries to use the Force to sooth the pain in her throat and head and clear up her vision. Every movement is slow and sluggish, though, and she can feel the rusted points of the floor scratching against her skin and pulling on her clothes. She finally manages to raise herself up onto her hands and knees, blinking a few times to clear her vision because the Force wasn't really helping and finally calm down her breathing so that she can think clearly. Faintly, in the back of her mind, Ahsoka can feel her two master's probing at her mind through the Force, but they are only causing her head to hurt more.

Someone grabs her arm and it takes her a moment to realize someone is speaking to her.

"Commander, are you alright?" Rex says, pulling her up to her feet and accepting her weight against him as he slings her arm over his shoulder.

Ahsoka opens her mouth to tell him that she was fine, she just needed a quick moment to collect herself, but all that came out was a terrible wheeze. One of his arms wraps around Ahsoka's waist while the other is still armed with his blaster, firing at the alien that held her just a few minutes earlier. Finally, her vision clears and she gets a good look at the alien that held her by the throat.

It was large, standing at probably seven to eight feet in height. It's legs are large and disjointed in a way that was unlike her own. Halfway up what would be the shin bone is another joint bent backwards. It's feet are large, bigger than her hand, with two large toes. It's got long arms with four fingers on each hand and broad shoulders. Ahsoka's not sure if it's the helmet or the shape of the head itself, but it's head was long and narrower with tiny, squinty eyes. It's upper jaw is similar to that of her own, but the lower jaw separates straight down the middle toward it's throat showing off razor sharp teeth.

It rubs at it's two sections of lower jaw, and covering it's face from the blaster shots. It shakes it head and spits what could only be blood onto the floor. She really must have got it in the face with her foot. And that was both without aiming and without being able to see. Go her.

Ahsoka looks around the room to see the other Clones clustering together trying to fight off against the other aliens that are shooting at them from around the room. Ahsoka shakes her head a bit, trying to look past the throbbing in her head to the alien now charging at them. None of Rex's shots seem to be able to breach through it's shields easily, and by the time the shields go down, the alien is right on top of them. With one massive, strong arm, he swipes at them, sending both Ahsoka and Rex flying against the back wall. Rex hits the wall in the room while Ahsoka flies out into the hallway.

Ahsoka trembles a bit when her back hits the wall and she fell to her butt, trying to settle the pain in her head and body, forcing herself to her feet quickly. She stumbles a bit, but manages to keep her feet planted firmly beneath her. She finally grabs her lightsaber and it comes to life in her hand. She blinks a few times, trying to clear up her double vision. When it finds it's center, she quickly lunges toward the blue armored alien in front of her, that had turned it's attention toward Rex.

Her lightsaber easily burns through the armor of the alien and into it's gut. It roars before it's eyes roll up into it's head and it falls backward, hitting the ground hard. The metal of the ship underneath it groans and screeches, bowing downward at the pressure, warping the already rusted material.

There is four others just like it, all in the same blue armor as the one that Ahsoka killed, look over at her. Ahsoka spins her lightsaber around, forcing herself to ignore the pain in her body and mind and focuses on the aliens in front of her. One of the aliens, holding another clone up by his throat, growls, squeezing his neck so tight Ahsoka hears it snap, before it discards him like he's nothing. Bodies litter the ground. Seven clones down, two of those aliens lie dead, three now, considering Ahsoka's kill.

As the injured clones try to pick themselves back up, the four aliens started moving toward Ahsoka.

"Rex, get the rest of the men and fall back!" Ahsoka orders her voice hoarse and wheezing, spinning her lightsaber around. One of the aliens growls at her. "Get back to Generals Obi-Wan and Anakin! I'll cover your escape!"

"Commander!" Rex calls out, his voice hitched in protest.

"Now, Rex!" Rex pauses, looking like he's warring with himself on whether to obey her orders as his commanding officer, or stay to help her, like a true friend would. Ahsoka's eyes narrow. "Rex, go! I'll be right on your tail!"

Rex nods. "Alright, boys! Quick now, fall back!"

Ahsoka steps over the body of the alien that she killed and spins her lightsaber around, noting that their small, narrow eyes follow the movement as if curious by it. A few minutes, that's all she needs to buy.. She needs to hold them off for a few minutes so that Rex and the other clones can get away. Then she can high tail it out of there too.

The four aliens look toward one another a bit, making strange noises - no speaking - to one another. They start to spread out, using the fact that they are able to speak a language that she doesn't now to be able to speak freely. Ahsoka's eyes flicker back and forth from one alien to another, listening to the sounds of the clones retreating down the hall. These aliens are intelligent. They seem to realize that Ahsoka - or at least her lightsaber - is more dangerous than the clones and their blasters.

One of the aliens, the one second to the right, brings up a small, strange blaster. It holds down the trigger and instead of firing right away or firing multiple shots, a green light, similar color to that of Ahsoka's lightsaber, starts to glow at the end of the small barrel. Ahsoka spins her lightsaber around so that it's in front of her rather than behind her. She feels she's going to need it.

The alien releases it's hold over the trigger and the green bolt flies toward her. It's not nearly as quick as a blaster shot, but it's fast enough that Ahsoka's sluggish and pained body and mind have a bit of difficulty keeping up with it regardless. She manages to block it before it hits her with her lightsaber and while it is slower than a blaster bolt, it's stronger than them. It threw her off a little bit, but she manages to keep her footing. Not wanting to waste any time for another one of those to come flying at her, Ahsoka charges at the one closest to her - which happens to be the furthest on the left - and swings her lightsaber at it.

It jumps back, growling at her before pulling out another blaster, but this one is glowing blue, and starts firing at her. The shots are still slower than regular blasters, but they are stronger - not as strong as the green one though. Once Ahsoka gets used to the strength, she bats them away and slices the head off of that alien before she feels a hand wrap around her left arm and tosses her against the same wall that Rex hit.

Ahsoka wheezes a bit but forces herself to move, rolling away as a foot comes down, hard, on the metal where Ahsoka was just moments before. She powers up her lightsaber and stabs it into the armor of the alien from behind it on the floor. It roars, staggering forward into the wall, shivering in pain. She must have been low enough that she just grazed it rather than cut completely through it. Her lightsaber is able to easily slice through their shields where the blaster bolts seemed to have some difficulties.

Ahsoka scrapes her knees hard against a sharp piece of metal, but she ignores it and makes a break for the door opening. As soon as she flies against the wall outside of the room and turns toward the way back when something grabs hold of the lekku on the back of her head and gives it a harsh tug. Ahsoka spins her lightsaber around and jabs it back, feeling it pierce into something. A roar in her ear and she's being thrown backward down the hall on the other side. The back of her shoulders is the first to hit the grated floor before she flops with her feet over her head and she hits open air.

A section of the floor must have corroded away because through pained, squinted eyes, she watches it fly by before she hits the ground, hard, a floor down.

"Damnit!" Ahsoka wheezes, having landed on her chest. She, admittedly, had little there, but it didn't mean that it still didn't hurt. She's been on the receiving end of an ass whooping more times than she'd care to admit, but this was just one more after another. She can't catch a break for even a moment. But she still can't just sit there and wait. She has to keep moving, even if her entire body and mind hurts. She pushes herself to her feet and looks directly ahead to see a bunch of rubble covering the hall, making it impossible to move aside, especially in the state that she's in. The only other way is behind her.

Her right arm, miraculously still holding her lightsaber, wrapped around her ribs as she stumbles and limps down the hall. She can barely see anything and has to power up her lightsaber in order to be able to make out anything in the darkness. There is signs around the hall that has withered away with time. Even if it was in a language that she could understand, it's worn so badly it's impossible to make out now.

Ahsoka takes a left, then a right, then another left and as soon as she rounds the corner, she sees the glow right as it's about to hit her right in the eyes, but she manages to bend backward enough to avoid the lightsaber. She spins around ready to call out to either of her masters, when she realizes that it's a floating white blade in the air.

"Fuck," Ahsoka whispers, hesitating for a moment. She summons up as much of her strength as she can and blasts it through the Force at it. The glowing saber, like two prongs fly against the corner and roars in anger. Ahsoka spins around and, through the pain, runs as fast as her legs can take her. There is a door at the end of the hall that is open just enough for her to be able to slip in between the door and the frame, cutting up her back just a little bit more. She hisses in pain before running toward the back of the room, hitting something hard at her ribs.

She moves her lightsaber down, so that she can see it's some kind of counsel in front of her. She squints down at it. There appears to be something... faintly blinking on the counsel, but it's so faint, it's hard to tell. Ahsoka reaches toward it with her free hand and touches it, immediately recoiling in disgust as the thick, slimy, mucus-like substance coats the tips of her fingers.

"Ew..." Ahsoka whispers before pulling up her lightsaber over her arm and squinting down at it. Her communicator is broken, there is a huge crack nearly severing it in half. She must have broken it in one of her many falls or when she was thrown about, but she has no idea when or where it happened. Ahsoka wipes off the counsel to stare at the dim, blinking blue light.

She presses it down by accident, "Oops" when she wiped the counsel clean and there is a hiss somewhere else in the room. She holds her lightsaber up a bit, but can't make out anything a few feet away from her. Why is there power to certain sections of the ship and not others? Was there solar panels on this part of the ship too? But how were they still working? Thy had to be thousands of years old, yet certain parts still had a minute bit of power while others didn't. It's odd.

The door behind her groans and Ahsoka spins around, watching through the dim light provided by her lightsaber. She can hear growling and that alien speech coming from the door.

Ahsoka powers down her lightsaber and slowly creeps about the room, looking for somewhere to hide. She lowers onto all fours, her body aching from the abuse it's been put through today. Her throat and back are competing for which should hurt the most and her head is trying to get in on the action, much to Ahsoka's chagrin.

The floor is covered with the soppy, wet boogery substance that, now that she's just a foot and a half away from it, realizes how much it stinks. She has to push the thought to the back of her head, she can't focus on that now. She has to hide somewhere and when the time comes, make a break for it. Her head is splitting so bad it's getting harder and harder for her to think. She's glad that Anakin and Obi-Wan were no longer probing her mind, because that only irritated the problem more, but she does hope that they find her soon, especially since she has no other way of contacting them. She trusts her masters, they will find her. She just has to keep herself alive long enough for them to do so.

Ahsoka bonks her head, bangs her shoulders and scrapers her hands and knees on just about everything in the room before she curls up against some kind of machine, by the feel of the rusted metal and knobs on the front of it, straining her eyes to peak through the darkness, trying to see where the aliens were. From what she can assume, they managed to pry the door open before multiple ones came in. At least three or four, one of which wielding the glowing blade. Their footsteps are heavy and slow and they "warg, warg, warg" at one another, communicating.

Ahsoka rubs at her head, the pulsing getting worse. It doesn't help that she hasn't quite been able to catch her breath since her throat was nearly crushed and she's been running around like a maniac since. Ahsoka feels like she's smarter than this, but just hasn't seen any proof yet today. She feels very off kilter today and she's not sure what it is, but she hopes that she lives long enough to be able to straighten herself out a bit.

It sounds like there is a conversation going on between at least two of them as they toss the room apart and judging by how far away it sounds, Ahsoka can only guess that this room was a lot bigger than she originally anticipated. Thankfully it sounds like they are moving deeper into the room while Ahsoka has, somehow, nudged herself into a corner closer to the entrance of the room. Hopefully she will be able to sneak past them or be of some sort of help when her masters and the clones show up.

One of the two alien's talking, away from the light provided by the glow of the strange blade, cuts off mid-word. There is a strange choking noise, then silence. Ahsoka blinks a few times, squinting her eyes wishing that she was able to see in the dark. The glowing blade, no doubt in the hand of one of the aliens that was still invisible to her, turns toward the alien that went silent and starts to growl.

There is a green glow from another, on the other side of the room, close to where the first one went silent and it fires a couple of it's strange green bolts around the room. They provide a bit more light into the room, especially when they hit a hulking figure wearing different armor than theirs and shaped much more humanoid than the aliens were. The other aliens in the room yell out angrily and charge toward the hulking figure, shooting and charging at him. Ahsoka can't really make anything out in the darkness, other than the swinging of the glowing blade and the sounds of fighting filling the once quiet air.

Maybe it was because of the fighting, or the aching that fills both her body and her mind, but she felt something at her shoulder moments too late. She spins her lightsaber around ignites it right as something sharp - and furry? Fuzzy? - jabs hard into the side of her right arm right as the green blade appears, spearing it and she pulls away sharply. It screams for a split second - a high pitched wail that hurt her ears - before going silent. Whatever stabbed her remained in her shoulder, but she jumped away from whatever machine she was next to and toward the fighting, feeling this coolness resonating from her stab wound through her arm but has to ignore it when she feels the smooth armor of one of the aliens against her leg as it was tossed aside like a rag doll.

A quick swipe of her lightsaber over top of it to make sure that it is one of the aliens and not whomever is in the room with them, before she brings her lightsaber down into it's chest, killing it immediately. The enemy of her enemy, after all. She didn't know who this other person was, but she liked the odds better of a one on one.

Even in the blackness Ahsoka feels her equilibrium shift dramatically to one side and she feels her left shoulder hit the ground hard. She sheaths her lightsaber, feeling like it would do more damage than anything else in the condition than she is. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Whatever stabbed her, there had to be something on the blade. Poison. Her arm is going numb. The chill of the poison feels like it's traveling throughout her entire body, but the paralyzing feeling is forming a growing radius from the stab wound in the middle of the upper part of her right arm.

Ahsoka, threading her figures through the grates once more, tries to pull herself away from the sounds of fighting, feeling her hearing in that ear starting to go a bit. Or maybe it's all of the blows to the head that she's had in the last hour. She tries to pull herself away but she feels her strength fading. She looks toward the fighting to see the glowing blade swinging around and either missing or being stopped by something that she can't see. There is a destructive fight for the blade, a lot of things crash to the ground or flip over before the blade appears to be apprehended by whomever else is in the room with them - how did they get in there again? Another entrance? - stabs the blade into the alien, who lets out a pain cry, before the room falls completely silent.

Ahsoka wheezes in pain, trying to push her body forward, needing to get out of the room and away from whatever hot mess was going on behind her. She can feel all of her energy seeping out of her from her feet. She feels like she's got five hundred pound weights on both of her ankles because she feels like she's pulling something a lot heavier than herself and she's not making it far.

There is a long moment of silence, as Ahsoka tries to pull herself closer to the door, where she wonders - briefly - if she had somehow imagined there was someone else in the room, because there was no other sound. But she could feel it through the Force. It was... odd. Unlike anything she had ever felt before. She wasn't really in her right mind to be able to analyze what she was feeling, but there was something that she could sense clearly. There was a battle-hardiness about them. When they entered the battle, it was high that they were so keenly used it, it came naturally to them.

The moment the battle was over, it vanished and this great sense of calmness settled over them. Ahsoka has only seen such a keen shift in Obi-Wan after a particularly intense battle. Her master, and admittedly herself, needed a bit of time to settle from the battle high whereas Obi-Wan had a much clearer control over the feeling.

How very odd.

Then she heard it's footsteps, just as heavy - if not heavier - than the aliens they just killed, they make their way over to her. She couldn't get away. She wasn't moving fast enough. They may have killed those that were hunting her, but that didn't mean that they weren't suddenly going to turn on her. She had to get out of here if her body would just start moving faster. 

Ahsoka, realizing whomever it was in the room with her was right on top of her, she twists onto her back and ignites her lightsaber, pointing it at the figure looming over her, just outside of her lightsaber's reach.

"Stay back!" Ahsoka snaps, her voice coming out as an angry, sluggish wheeze.

The light from her saber illuminates the looming figure enough to see that his body shape was definitely humanoid. He's decked out, head to toe, in what appears to be a bulky green body armor. It appears to be one giant suit rather than multiple plates of armor all brought together. Her lightsaber is green and she can only assume that it is of similar color. He is hulking, about as tall as those aliens with arms thicker - especially in that armor - than her thighs. Which is insane. And his head, covered by a helmet, has an orange visor that is reflecting the light of her saber back at her a bit. In his hand, which has five fingers each, is a strange curved handle that didn't appear natural, but that was it. There was nothing else distinguishable about him.

But through the Force, as she jabs her lightsaber at him a bit, in a thinly veiled threat she wasn't sure she would be able to uphold in her condition, he didn't feel upset or angry. The battle high he felt moments before is still soothed by calmness. And... gentleness? It was so odd. Through the Force he is somehow conveying that he wasn't going to hurt her, or at least he had no intention of hurting her. In fact, if anything, he appeared curious of her.

"Stay..." Ahsoka slurs, feeling her head spin. "Stay... back..." The coolness of the poison radiates throughout her entire arm and up her neck and into her chest. Her lightsaber starts to lower more and more to her side. She has to power it down before she drops it on her chest or cuts her arm off.

The last thing she sees, though, is a light appearing from the side of his head, narrowing in on whatever had stabbed her in the arm. He says something, in a deep, ragged voice, but it's in a language she doesn't understand. He leans down on one knee, inspecting the thing in her arm that she's too weak to even move her head to see, before she hears a voice from somewhere that feels like miles away.

"Ahsoka!" It was her master's voice.

Everything goes black.


End file.
